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Class 

Book_ - ^»4 

Copyright N° ^ 

CQEOUGHT DEPOSED 























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THE CHUCK WAGON 





ON THE 
OPEN RANGE 


BY 

J. FRANK DOBIE 


/ 


Author of Coronado’s Children and A Vaquero 
of the Brush Country 


Illustrated by 

BEN CARLTON MEAD / 



THE SOUTHWEST PRESS 

Dallas ----- Texas 


<R 


IA 


h 2 




•3\m- 

& 


Copyright, 1931, by 

THE SOUTHWEST PRESS J 





a y 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 


PRESS OP 

braunworth e , co„ inc. 
book manufacturers 

BROOKLYN. NEW YORK 


^ SEP 11 1931’ 

®C1A 45244 f- 


For 


The Children of the Southwest 
who have a right 

to the traditions of the unfenced world 
their predecessors hunted, rode, 
roped and fought in 
and settled and conquered, 

and especially for 

Richard, Ray Pearl, Edgar, Patty, 
Bertha Lucile, and Emily 









































































■ 


































* 














CONTENTS 


List of Illustrations. 

Preface . . * . . 

CHAPTER 

I. Wild Life: Game Animals 

Daniel Boone, the Wild.Gobbler 
Prairie Chicken Eggs 
The Buffalo Stampede 
El Matador 

II. Other Wild Life. 

El Senor Coyote 

The Fiddler and the Wolves 

Slowtrap’s Panther 

Prairie Dogs, Paisanos, and Rattlesnakes 

III. “Bars” and “Bar” Hunters . 

The David Crockett Tradition 
The Grizzly and Hugh Glass 
The Bear that Pablo Romero Roped 
When the Penasco Ran Bear’s Oil 

IV. Longhorns. 

Sancho 

Old Blue, the Bell Ox 

V. Mustangs. 

Mustangers 
A Mustang Hunt 
The Pacing White Steed 

VI. Horse Stories. 

Mistus and the Panther 
Shanghai and Selim, Indian Fighters 
A Race and a Whinny 
Saved From a Stampede 


PAGE 

. vii 
. ix 

1 

. 27 

. 48 

. 65 

. 84 

. 110 


V 



Contents 


CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. Rides and Riders .123 

The Pony Express 
A Cowboy with a Money Belt 
In a Wyoming Blizzard 
The Spaniard without a Head 
Greatest of All the Comanches 


VIII. The Kansas Kid: “A Cowboy for to Be” 

IX. The Language of Brands 

X. Indian Captives. 

The Crane’s Drumstick 
“Me Cynthy Ann!” 

The Boy Hermit 

XI. A Fugitive from Goliad .... 

XII. Stories That Names Tell 
The River of Lost Souls 
Los Brazos de Dios 
Stampede Mesa 

XIII. Buried Treasure. 

The Mezcla Man 

The Rider of Loma Escondida 


. 146 
. 165 
. 183 


. 202 
. 231 


. 249 


XIV. Lost Mines .269 

Nuggets in the Sand 

The Breyfogle in Death Valley 

Bowie’s Secret 


Suggested Readings ....... 297 

Words, Phrases and Names Peculiar to the Open 

Range Country .303 


VI 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


COLOR PLATES 


The Chuck Wagon. Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

In a Pioneer Home . 22 

Mustangs.98 

The Desert Rat.292 


BLACK AND WHITE DRAWINGS 

PAGE 

One of the wolves stuck his head through the roof . 35 

With the limp form of Pablo Romero across the saddle, the 

bear rode off into the brush.60 

Maria just hugged Sancho and made him up a batch of 


tamales . ..71 

The White Steed grasped the collar of Gretchen’s dress and 

lifted her gently upon the mare.106 

The colt sprang to its mother’s side, the panther in pursuit . Ill 
The headless Spaniard continued to appear in widely sepa¬ 
rated places.138 

“Any good ranches around here?” the Kansas Kid asked . 151 
“Come out here,” I yelled to the banker, “and look at my 

identification”.172 

I bounded up and let drive an arrow that ended that lobo’s 

career.197 

I reached in and stealthily began pulling out the gun . . 223 

“ This river shall henceforth be called Los Brazos de Dios ” . 239 
The pastor read the writing on the mezcla man’s breast again 257 
She never knew how many hours she stumbled, crawled, 

cried.273 

Chart to the Lost San Saba Mine.288 

vii 










PREFACE 


This book was written mainly for boj r s and 
girls—to deliver to them something that is theirs 
by right of inheritance. The preface, however, 
is not for them. Explanations are always tedi¬ 
ous, as Matthew Arnold remarked, and boys and 
girls have too much of life to tolerate tedious¬ 
ness. That’s for their elders. 

The “open range” on which the characters and 
animals herein act their parts is not restricted 
entirely to ranch country. The book is a col¬ 
lection of tales and narratives taken directly 
from the soil and harking back to a time when 
the soil was unfenced, whether raced over by 
pony expressmen or grazed by longhorns and 
mustangs, whether made fearful by savages or 
glamorous with hope for lads wanting to be cow¬ 
boys, whether prospected in by thirst-defying 
miners of Arizona deserts or harboring in its 
mighty forests along the Mississippi’s drainage 
the cabins of squatters who, like David Crockett, 
lived to hunt bear. To this unfenced world be¬ 
long both the Mexican vaquero of the border and 
the settlers who fought Santa Anna. To it 
belong not only Hugh Glass, who fought the 


IX 


Preface 


grizzly of the Rockies, but also the pioneer 
woman who rode Mistus against a panther—at 
a time when horses still meant life and cultivated 
fields were the only fenced areas among immense 
plantations on the eastern side of the Southwest. 

I should be very much humiliated should any¬ 
one buy this book under the delusion that it is a 
history of the open range. In the formal sense 
it is not a history at all. Yet that the tales and 
narratives composing it will in the end teach the 
truest kind of history I have not the least doubt. 
Some of them are straightforward chronicles of 
pioneer experiences. Others express the imag¬ 
ination of the people who came upon the range 
when it was open and who conquered it and 
fenced it. 

It used to be asserted with great vehemence 
that the only folk tales produced by America 
were negro tales of the Uncle Remus character. 
The American people and particularly the people 
of the Southwest are coming to realize that such 
assertions are false and absurd. 

We are inheritors of a vast body of tales about 
cunning coyotes, matchless mustangs, fabulous 
mines, gigantic bears, phantom stampedes, dar¬ 
ing riders, and scores of other phenomena char¬ 
acteristic of our land. We have a well authenti¬ 
cated horseback tradition excelled not even by 
that of the Tartars and gauchos; at the same 
x 


Preface 


time we have headless horsemen as good as any 
provided by the forests of Germany. We do 
not have to go to the Eskimos or to Grimm for 
folk tales any more than the Grimm brothers 
themselves had to go outside Germany for 
theirs. 

Furthermore, we have a right to regard these 
tales of the Southwest, emanating both from the 
actual experiences and the imagination of a dis¬ 
tinct people—tales about a real horse named 
Selim that fought Indians and also about a phan¬ 
tom horse that frightened the wives of squatters 
—as a very precious element in our social in¬ 
heritance. They express the very pith of a 
civilization highly individual, highly flavored, 
and as noble as civilizations are wont to run. 

Some of the material that follows has appeared 
variously in The Saturday Evening Post, Coun¬ 
try Gentleman, Southwest Review, American 
Mercury, New York Herald Tribune Magazine 
(which syndicates to newspapers over the coun¬ 
try), and Frontier Stories . At appropriate 
places I have noted indebtedness to John C. 
Duval’s Early Times in Texas and Herman Leh¬ 
mann’s Nine Years with the Indians . 

It is a particular pleasure to thank here my 
friends Charles L. Kezer, professor in Okla¬ 
homa Agricultural and Mechanical College, who 
narrated to me the story of the Kansas Kid; 


XI 


Preface 


R. H. Seale, of the Brazos, a Teccian of the old 
breed, who can tell the best horse and rawhide 
stories in the world; W. H. (Bill) Kittrell, of 
Dallas, one of whose family rode Bonnie Belle 
and whose tale about “Colonel Dinwiddie’s 
Mole” is the neatest buried treasure story I 
have ever heard; Bob Snow, who ranges all 
over the brush country between the Nueces 
and the Rio Bravo hunting panthers and who 
while I was in his camp told me the tales about 
the bear roped by a vaquero and the coyote’s visit 
with the rooster; John Rigby, who more than 
fifty years ago helped drive Sancho up the trail 
and who is still following cows; and to other 
generous-natured, companionable men who are 
rich with a flavor that only the earthy soil to 
which they belong can impart. 

Had it not been for P. L. Turner, who by his 
audacity and enterprise is building up in the 
Southwest Press an agent for Southwestern 
civilization that has no precedent and no limit to 
its potentialities, I should never have begun this 
book. Had it not been for B. M. D., ever pres¬ 
ent help in time of writing, I could hardly have 
finished it—so far as it is finished. 

J. Frank Dobie 

On Waller Creek 
Austin, Texas 
June 30, 1931 

xii 


ON THE OPEN RANGE 


Chapter I 

WILD LIFE: GAME ANIMALS 

When the white men came to this country, 
they found the prairies turfed with grass, the for¬ 
est land rich with leaf mold from giant trees, 
and scrub brush .largely restricted to places un¬ 
suitable to either grass or timber. The seeds of 
brush cannot sprout in ground matted with thick 
grass. Periodically the Indians burned off the 
prairies, and, while this practice prevented the 
soil from being enriched by vegetable mold, it 
kept down the spread of brush. 

The streams were clear, and water ran the year 
round down creeks that are now dry except after 
rains. The average rainfall has not decreased, 
but the creeks have filled in with sand and mud 
from erosion and the water must find its way 
underground. Also wells by the thousands have 
tapped many of the underground streams and 
caused springs to dry up. When the white set¬ 
tlers plowed the turf under, over-grazed the 
range, and cut down the forests, they made the 
land naked. Even a slight rainfall will erode 
1 


On the Open Range 


soil that is not protected and carry it away. 
Brush and weeds spring up on naked soil and 
“take the country.” 

With springs, creeks, rivers, and lakes dis¬ 
tributing water, and with grass, roots, berries, 
and trees growing everywhere—except in the 
most arid deserts—the pristine land supported a 
varied and abundant wild life. The white men 
wasted it as they wasted the soil. For instance, 
passenger pigeons once existed in America by the 
millions. They roosted in such numbers that 
they often broke down the branches of trees with 
their weight. The settlers would go to these 
roosts at night and with guns and sticks slaughter 
the pigeons by the wagon load. Not one remains 
now. Buffaloes, deer, antelopes, and turkeys were 
slaughtered in the same way. 

Such slaughter is the opposite of sportsman¬ 
ship. It is uncivilized. A true sportsman is more 
interested in preserving wild life than in destroy¬ 
ing it. Lovers of nature, young and old alike, in¬ 
creasingly find more pleasure in the study of wild 
life and in hunting with a camera than in merely 
killing. If Theodore Roosevelt had not been 
more interested in the habits of animals than in 
shooting them, his hunting experiences would not 
now be read. The tens of thousands of boys who 
nowadays try to learn the names and habits of 
birds have infinitely more pleasure than those 
2 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

boys who wantonly destroy every bird’s nest they 
find. 

It is only the ignorant and thoughtless who 
want to kill everything they see. Some negroes 
kill lizards because they imagine the lizard will 
run down a person’s throat and poison him; en¬ 
lightened people know that the lizard, in addition 
to being pretty and having a right to lead its 
harmless life, destroys flies. A grass snake is as 
harmless as a mockingbird, and the fact that a 
rattlesnake should be killed is no reason for kill¬ 
ing all snakes. Farmers know that birds as de¬ 
stroyers of insects are their best friends. It has 
been discovered that bats eat mosquitoes, and so 
instead of destroying bats some communities have 
built bat roosts in order to keep mosquitoes down. 
Even spiders are for the most part harmless, and, 
since they destroy insect pests, should not be 
indiscriminately killed. Furthermore, such in¬ 
sects as butterflies are not only wonderful in 
their loveliness and a joy to man but are ex¬ 
tremely useful in carrying pollen from one blos¬ 
som to another and in thus making fruit trees 
bear fruit. 

Daniel Boone, the Wild Gobbler 

Our common barnyard fowls—turkeys, ducks, 
chickens, geese, guineas—are all descended from 
3 


On the Open Range 


the wild. America gave the turkey to the world, 
and, while people generally eat too much of it at 
Thanksgiving, the turkey is an appropriate sym¬ 
bol for one of our chief holidays. Like white¬ 
tailed deer, turkeys were once common over most 
of the United States. Although they have been 
almost exterminated in many states, in some 
parts of Texas and other regions of the South¬ 
west where they are protected, they are still to be 
found in large numbers. 

As the public is more and more educated to 
conserve wild life, perhaps this noble bird will ex¬ 
tend its range and again make glad with gobble 
and proud strut the forests of its ancestors. Such 
an outcome is to be desired, for surely there is no 
more cheerful sound in the w r orld, unless it be the 
call of the bobwhite and the friendly chirp of 
the robin, than a wild turkey’s gobble. Upon 
awaking in the morning a turkey of the woods 
likes to gobble, but he can be much more easily 
heard than seen, for he is a very shy creature. 
He has a keen eyesight—keener than that of the 
deer—and is not nearly so curious. He can smell 
and hear as well as he can see. There is an old 
story to illustrate the keen senses and wildness 
of the turkey. 

It was noticed that an Indian hunter who 
brought venison, bear meat, grouse and other 
game for sale, only rarely offered his customers 
4 


Wild Life: Game Animals 


a wild turkey. One day a purchaser asked the 
Indian why this was. 

“Well,” replied the Indian, “me tell you. Me 
meet moose; he stop to eat grass; me shoot him. 
Me meet bear; he climb tree, no see Indian, and 
me shoot him. Me meet deer; he look up and 
Indian stop. The deer he go graze some more 
and me get closer. The deer he look again and 
switch tail. He say, ‘Maybe so Indian, maybe so 
old stump.’ He no run, and then me get close 
and shoot him. But wild turkey! He all time 
watch. He see me far off. Then he say, ‘Indian 
come sure.’ He run away fast. Me no can shoot 
turkey. He too smart.” 

A hunter in the Louisiana forests used to tell 
a story about a certain old gobbler. Perhaps he 
exaggerated a little, but, for all that, his story 
teaches a good many things about wild turkeys 
and turkey hunting. 

“You can go to the fox and the wolf if you 
want to,” this hunter often said, “to find a cun¬ 
ning creature, but I’ll go to the turkey every 
time. I once hunted after the same big gobbler 
for three years and never saw him but twice. 
One time he was flying out of a tree. I went 
back to that tree the next night, but not a turkey 
was in it. I am satisfied that he never roosted in 
the same tree twice in succession. Pie ranged 
by himself a good deal of the time, and when he 
5 


On the Open Range 

was with other turkeys he kept kind of to one 
side. 

“I knew that critter’s yelp as well as I knew 
the voice of Music, my old deer dog. And his 
track was as plain to me as the drag of a log 
down a sandy road. Oh, it was an enormous 
track. I called him Daniel Boone, he was such 
a good woodsman. 

“I always hunted old Daniel in the same part 
of the woods and seldom failed to find his scratch- 
ings. With one rake of his toes he could scratch 
up enough pine needles to make a pig’s bed. I 
had a ‘turkey caller’ made out of a quill, and I 
know I can make that quill go just like a turkey, 
for I have called up a thousand to me with it. 
I hear people talk about hunting turkeys. Now 
the way to hunt turkeys is to make them hunt 
you. Just get down in the bushes somewhere 
and go to calling on a quill, and if you know how 
to call, you’ll have turkeys running up to investi¬ 
gate. They think there’s another turkey want¬ 
ing company. 

“Of course, it’s not everybody can call, but 
I want to give you a little experience that’ll 
illustrate how well some hunters can. One morn¬ 
ing I was out early looking for turkey, when I 
heard old Daniel Boone just a-splitting his throat 
gobbling not more than two hundred yards away. 
Oh, I knew his voice! It had in it all the pride 
6 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

of a yearling colt and a thousand-year-old oak 
tree combined. We were in marshy land covered 
with trees and brush, and of course I couldn’t 
actually see Daniel Boone, but when I heard that 
gobble, I pictured him as clear as daylight with 
the rising sun on his bronze feathers, with his long 
black beard, and with the top-knot on his red 
head quivering every time he gobbled. 

“I knew it wasn’t any use for me to try to slip 
up on him. But now was the chance to call him. 
So I got down behind an old pine log, pulled 
out my quill, and began going just like a turkey 
hen. At the first note, I heard Daniel Boone 
stop. I knew he was listening. I waited a little 
while too; then I went soft and cooing, like the 
hen was saying, ‘Come on, come on.’ 

“Well, sir, the next thing I knew a wildcat was 
on my back, his claws in my shoulders and his 
teeth in my neck. Wildcats are powerfully fond 
of turkeys, you know. He’d heard me calling, 
slipped up, and, being so eager, had sprung upon 
the sound, going by ear and not by sight. I 
couldn’t pull him off or scare him away. He 
was probably as excited as I was, and the louder 
I yelled and the more I jumped around, the 
deeper he dug in. Finally I got a clean dig into 
his heart with my Bowie knife. It was several 
days after that before I went turkey hunting 
again. The scars are still with me, as anybody 
7 


On the Open Range 


can see. Ever since that wildcat episode I take 
a look behind me as well as in front whenever I 
call turkeys. 

“But no, sir, Daniel Boone knew better than 
to take that call for a sure enough turkey’s voice. 
It might fool a wildcat but not him. Why, after 
a while he got so that when I called, he would 
run away from me. He’d circle around until 
he struck my tracks and then he’d just light out 
in the opposite direction from the way my toes 
were pointing. 

“Well, when I discovered how smart he was, 
I just laughed and said to myself, ‘I’ll play a 
trick on you.’ He generally ranged on a long 
ridge that sloped down to a swamp at one end. 
Just about the edge of this swamp was a hollow 
cypress tree. One day I went out to the ridge 
wearing a pair of shoes about three sizes too big 
for me. When I got there, I took those shoes 
off and changed them on my feet so that the toes 
were pointing backwards and the heels forward. 
It wasn’t very comfortable walking in them that 
way, but I managed to limp along. I took right 
down the ridge towards that big cypress tree. Of 
course I didn’t catch sight of Daniel Boone any¬ 
where, but I knew he was in the country. 

“When I reached the cypress, I changed my 
shoes again so as to be comfortable. Then I 
crawled up into the hollow and fixed myself so 
8 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

I could keep a good lookout up the ridge and 
along the line of tracks I had made. I had my 
gun loaded and cocked. Well, after I was all 
ready, I took my turkey quill out and began call¬ 
ing. Before long I saw a young gobbler coming 
up from one side, stretching out his neck so as 
to listen and look better and going put-put-put 
the way turkeys do. But I wasn’t interested in 
such ignorant critters as that. I was out after 
Daniel Boone. 

“Patience, patience is what it takes to learn 
about any animal, and it was a good half hour 
before I saw Daniel Boone coming. I don’t know 
where he was when he heard me call, but with¬ 
out uttering a sound he had taken out until he 
struck my tracks and then trotted in the direc¬ 
tion opposite to where the toes of the shoes 
pointed. He was coming down an open blaze 
on the ridge that I’d chosen particularly to 
walk in. 

“As the Indian says, a deer will take a motion¬ 
less man for the stump of a tree; but I’m here to 
say that a wild turkey is so leery he’ll take a 
stump for a man. Safety first is strictly his 
motto. About the time old Daniel got a couple 
of hundred yards away from the cypress, he quit 
paying much attention to the shoe tracks and be¬ 
gan acting mighty curious concerning what was 
in front of him. I was so well back in the hollow 
9 


On the Open Range 


of the cypress tree that he couldn’t possibly de¬ 
tect me; still I couldn’t help feeling nervous. If 
I’d had a rifle, I could have risked a long shot, 
but with a shotgun the bird would have to draw 
up pretty nigh for me to make sure of him. 

“But Daniel came on, walking now. Once he 
rushed off to one side in a zigzag manner and I 
thought he was gone sure, but from his actions I 
decided he was just catching a grasshopper on 
the wing. He got coursed right again and came 
on, taking his time. He’d stretch his long neck 
out and peer into a clump of grass, and then he’d 
twist his red head around first one way and 
another so his eyes could take in everything from 
the tips of the trees around him to the wild violets 
growing at their roots. 

“At last when Daniel was maybe sixty steps 
off and I was just ready to pull down on him, he 
began put-put-putting . Then he jumped into 
the air with a wild gobble that carried farther 
than any hunting horn ever carried, and, wings a- 
beating and claws a-working, came down in the 
grass about ten yards closer. I’ve watched the 
antics of gobblers strutting in front of turkey 
hens, but I never saw anything like this before 
and I’ve never seen anything like it since. I was 
simply too interested to shoot. In no time the 
young gobbler that had shown himself first and 
then gone off into the timber was by Daniel’s side. 

10 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

The king of wild turkeys didn’t seem to pay him 
any mind. He went on calling for other turkeys 
and he was terribly, terribly excited. I heard a 
kind of rattling that sounded suspicious, but I 
was all eyes and not enough ears to make out for 
sure what Daniel kept maneuvering at in the 
grass. 

“Well, directly the turkeys began arriving. 
They weren’t running and they weren’t flying. 
They were doing both—volplaning I believe they 
call it these days. In ten minutes there must 
have been twenty turkeys on the ground. Then 
the thing that was creating all the excitement 
moved out to a place kind of bare, and I saw it 
was a monster rattlesnake. As I afterwards 
measured, it was a fraction over seven feet long. 
The other gobblers would make a show at charg¬ 
ing it, but Daniel Boone was the only one that 
really struck it. He would swoop so as to hit 
it with a stiffened wing. Once when the snake 
was reared up fully two feet, I saw it strike a 
wing, but, my, the biggest fangs and the fullest 
sac of poison in the world could not hurt that 
bony fan. All the time now the rattler’s tail was 
a-going like a buzz saw. I had a great mind to 
shoot him, I was that strong against him, but of 
course I knew that if I shot him, I’d never get a 
chance at Daniel. All I did was keep on 
watching. 


11 


On the Open Range 


“The contest went on maybe half an hour. I 
was straining every nerve so that I felt myself 
getting plumb weak. I could see that Daniel 
Boone was getting fagged too. The heat was 
telling on him. Still he didn’t let up. Finally he 
gave a kind of choking sound that he meant for a 
triumphal whoop, and then the other turkeys 
went calmly to pecking on the dead rattlesnake 
and eating him right up. All but Daniel Boone. 
He just stood to one side, too exhausted to think 
about eating. The show was over and now was 
my time to get the finest turkey in the world. 
Somehow I hesitated. 

“The old rascal walked down to get in the 
shade that another tree cast on the ground right 
in front of my cypress. Tie kind of lay over on 
his side, and I could tell he was thinking about 
water. I could see the shadings of blue and red 
in his wattles, he was that close, and the sheen on 
his great beard. And all the time I was thinking 
to myself what a shame it was to kill him after 
he had put up such a noble battle and done the 
world such a good deed. Still, he’d be the prize 
game of my hunting life. 

“While I was debating in this way and feeling 
the trigger of my gun, Daniel’s eye seemed to 
find the hole in the cypress tree that my eyes were 
peering through. Well, sir, quicker than a shot 
he darted into the timber and all the other turkeys 
12 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

darted too, and, blame me, if I hadn’t let him 
go. I was glad he got away, and still I was 
mightily out with myself for having lost him. I 
knew it wouldn’t be any use to ever try to trick 
him again. 

“So far as I know, Daniel Boone lived out his 
natural life. For a long time after that, I used 
to see his scratchings and occasionally hear his 
gobble. I know that no wildcat ever slipped 
up on him and that no hunter ever shot him. 
I guess Daniel Boone was about the smartest 
turkey gobbler anybody ever heard of.” 

Some men can imitate a turkey’s voice pretty 
well by blowing on the leaf of a wild thistle. 
Others can mock an old gobbler or a turkey hen 
so that even an experienced ear can hardly detect 
the difference. Indians used to signal each other 
by imitating coyotes and turkeys. 

One time, a folk tale goes, a company of rang¬ 
ers were camped out in the Indian country, pretty 
much living on game around them. One morn¬ 
ing while they were eating breakfast they heard 
a clear, strong gobble that sounded to be about 
half a mile down the draw on which they were 
camped. It happened that they had nothing par¬ 
ticular to do that day. Nobody had seen any 
Indian sign in the whole country for a month and 
some of the rangers had permission to go to the 
settlement. 


13 


On the Open Range 


“Boys,” said a young and inexperienced ranger 
named Sam, “I like the sound of that gobbler’s 
voice. He’s a big one. I’ll ride down that way 
and see if I can get him. If I shoot him, I’ll 
bring him back. If I don’t, I’m going to ride 
on into the settlement. In that case, I won’t be 
back for three or four days.” 

Sam rode off. Not long afterwards the men 
in camp heard a shot. Then when their com¬ 
panion did not appear, they supposed that he 
had missed the turkey and ridden on into the 
settlement. 

The next morning about breakfast time the 
strong, clear gobble that had been heard the day 
before again sounded down the draw. 

“That gobbler certainly is feeling struttv,” one 
of the rangers said. “It appears that Sam’s shot 
didn’t scare him a bit yesterday. I guess he was 
running. I’m going into the settlement today, 
but I had just as soon bring you fellows staying 
here in camp a turkey before I set out. If I 
don’t get Mr. Gobbler, I’ll just ride on and come 
back with Sam.” 

So this second turkey hunter rode down the 
draw. He must have been rather cautious, for 
it was a good while before the report of a rifle 
sounded in camp. But no ranger with or with¬ 
out a turkey made his appearance. 

On the third morning the gobble was repeated. 

14 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

“Now,” an old ranger spoke up, “there’s some¬ 
thing kind of peculiar about that gobbling. I’m 
going to investigate, and if I don’t come back, 
maybe you fellows that are left here had better 
hunt me up.” 

The old ranger did not ride. He went afoot, 
and he went very cautiously. He did not go 
straight down the draw, but made a circle so that 
he would come in on the bold gobbler from the 
other side. After a long time a shot rang out. 
The old ranger returned to camp but without a 
turkey. 

“Boys,” he said to his companions, “I did not 
miss, but the gobbler we have been hearing was a 
big Comanche with a fine rifle. I discovered him 
in a tree looking up towards our camp and ex¬ 
pecting one of us to come after him. He fooled 
two of us, and the shots we heard yesterday and 
the day before each took the life of a ranger. But 
that Comanche gobbler will never take another 
scalp. Come, and I’ll show you the whole story.” 

Prairie Chicken Eggs 

The prairie chicken (or pinnated grouse) has 
not fared so well as the turkey in resisting the 
slaughter of civilization. For one thing he is not 
so alert; for another, he does not take so naturally 
to the cover afforded by brush and trees. Still 
the way he can sometimes camouflage himself in 
15 


On the Open Range 


the grass is wonderful. Like the turkey, the 
prairie ehicken builds its nest on the ground. If 
it were not for the fact that nature has made 
these creatures devoid of scent while they are 
sitting on their nests, wild animals would have 
smelled them out and almost exterminated them 
even before man became their enemy. Many a 
cowboy has had to “grab for leather” when a 
prairie chicken flew up and frightened his horse 
into bucking. 

The eggs of prairie chickens were considered 
a great delicacy by men who lived on the open 
range and seldom tasted an egg of any kind. 
The Indians knew a way of carrying these eggs 
that few egg-gatherers around farm yards ever 
tried. One time a cowboy and an Indian named 
Nasho were riding along together when a prairie 
chicken suddenly whirred up from her nest. 

“You watch nest,” said Nasho. “Me get hen.” 

The chicken did not go far, but began limping 
and acting as if her leg were broken, her back 
sprained, and one wing useless. Anyone who 
has watched a bobwhite try to toll an intruder 
away from her nest by “playing cripple” will 
know what a good actor a prairie chicken can be. 
Nasho followed her, an iron stake-pin, used for 
picketing out his horse, in hand. Presently he 
got close enough to the hen to throw the pin and 
killed her. 


16 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

Now,” said the Indian, “we take eggs so 
they no break.” 

He merely opened the chicken, took out the 
“insides,” and put the contents of the nest very 
carefully into the cavity. There were eight eggs. 
Then Nasho wrapped the chicken in long blades 
of grass, tied a buckskin string around and 
around the wrapping, and fastened the package 
behind his saddle. The eggs did not break, and 
when they were fried with the chicken for break¬ 
fast next morning, they were delicious. 

The Buffalo Stampede 

The story of the American bison, popularly 
called buffalo, is for the most part a story of 
herds immense beyond human conception and 
then a story of the maddest and most wasteful 
slaughter of game animals that man has ever 
engaged in. In some regions the buffaloes were 
so thick that a herd of cattle had to be driven 
hundreds of miles around them in order to get 
to its destination. A train on the first trans¬ 
continental railroad was kept standing out on the 
prairie for hours while a sea of buffaloes crossed 
the tracks in front of the engine. Buffalo hunt¬ 
ers during the sixties and seventies shipped hides 
by the hundreds of thousands. After there were 
no more buffaloes to be killed, men gathered up 
17 


On the Open Range 


the bones and sold them by the trainload to be 
made into fertilizer. 

Better than any tale is this description 
of a buffalo stampede on the plains of the 
Texas Panhandle, as given by a pioneer sur¬ 
veyor . 1 

“Although there was a gracious promise in 
this warm, red soil of bountiful harvests in the 
long years of the future, yet I believe that I have 
never looked upon any other country as destitute 
of the graces which go to make up what we call 
scenery as this plain which then lay before our 
eyes. The blue sky met the horizon of grass, 
browned by a long drouth, in a circle unmarked 
by trees, stone, or hill save some sand dunes to 
the southwest. Heat devils dancing up and down 
in the distance made the outlines of the dunes 
waver with uncertainty. 

“But away from that margin there was no 
movement; even the birds of the air were not to 
be seen. Nor was there a sound. There was no 
hum of bees, no chirping of crickets, no swish of 
a bird’s wing, no rustling of leaves. It might 
have been a dead world. But we could not con¬ 
sider it a desert, so long as the spring of w r ater 
by which were camped kept up its flow and the 
sward of grass lay so solidly on the dark red 

i Taken with thanks from a privately printed brochure by 
Judge O. W. Williams, Fort Stockton, Texas, 1930. 

18 


Wild Life: Game Animals 


earth. Yet it was only a few hours until we saw 
animal life passing over this world in great mass 
and swift motion with the sound of falling 
water. . . . 


“We had run our survey line some six or eight 
miles down the water course, when, as I was 
setting up my instrument, the flagman asked if 
I had not heard a peculiar noise. I stopped my 
work to listen. I caught a throbbing sound of 
somewhat irregular cadence such as I had heard 
two years before when nearly twenty miles away 
from Niagara Falls. It came from the north, 
and, looking in that direction, we could make out 
what seemed to be a low-flying cloud sweeping 
down on us quite rapidly. 

“It was late July; so it could hardly be 
a norther, and there was nothing in its appear¬ 
ance to lead us to suspect it might be a rain cloud. 
We were for a moment at a loss to account for 
it. But when we caught sight of dark objects 
emerging from the dust and then dropping back 
from sight, almost at once the cry went up, 
‘Buffaloes! A stampede!’ 

“Looking back, we saw our wagon and ambu¬ 
lance, as a hack was called in those days, about 
half a mile away, lining up to meet the charge 
with the narrowest front possible. We prepared 
our little party to face the stampede on our own 
ground. 


19 


On the Open Range 


“We stood in single file facing the oncoming 
herd, the last man in the line holding the reins of 
my horse. With the only rifle in the party, 
naturally I was at the head of the file in order 
to split the passing animals by the firing of the 
gun—if they did not divide upon catching sight 
of us. There was no greater danger at the head 
of the file than at its foot, for once it was broken 
at the head, immediately the whole line would 
go down. 

“We were barely ready when the buffaloes 
were upon us with a swirl of dust and a thunder 
of hoofs. Yet, so far as I could judge, they were 
absolutely mute. The front line was thickly 
packed shoulder to shoulder, and the eyes were 
cast back as if trying to see something behind. 
When I realized that the buffaloes were not look¬ 
ing at us, I began firing the gun. They came on. 
At the distance of a hundred feet, they seemed 
bound to run over us without seeing us. My 
firing had no effect, and I do not believe that the 
sound of the gun was heard by the animals. 
When it seemed certain that the herd would not 
split at sight of us, I began aiming at some of the 
leaders and shooting as rapidly as possible. They 
came on. But when the leaders opposite me got 
within thirty or thirty-five feet of where I stood, 
they began pushing their neighbors to one side 
or the other so as to make an opening in that 
20 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

crowded front line. The opening must have been 
about twelve feet wide when the front line passed 
us, although it seemed to me that I could touch a 
buffalo on either side with the point of my gun. 

“Behind this dense line there was no regular 
formation, and the animals came on in loose 
order, gradually thinning out to the rear. As 
soon as I felt safe in doing so, I turned back to 
see in what condition the onrush had left our 
party. During the terrific uproar of the passing 
multitude, I had dimly made out sounds that 
might have come from the men or the horse be¬ 
hind me, and when I turned I greatly feared that 
some calamity had befallen us. But beyond a 
horse that was trembling, and four men who 
were exceedingly dust laden, there was nothing 
to show that we had been in any danger. 

“When the big bodies passed us, they plunged 
through the small tule-bordered creek. Their 
path was marked by a splatter of mud and water 
on the brownish yellow grass for some forty 
yards out, and the banks and bed of the creek 
were imprinted with the huge briskets and cloven 
feet. The water for a few minutes ceased 
to run. We saw no animals mired or bogged 
down, but had the stream been wider, some 
of the weaker, lagging buffaloes would never 
have gotten out to hard ground. We had seen 
on the larger streams numbers of places in boggy 
21 


On the Open Range 


ground where the carcasses of these beasts were 
locked up thickly in the dried mud. 

‘‘As soon as the last of the animals had passed 
us and our vision opened, we could see that the 
party with the ambulance and wagon had weath¬ 
ered the storm and were getting ready to follow 
our march. Some of our men estimated the herd 
to number fifty thousand buffaloes. It was im¬ 
possible to make any reliable estimate, but it was 
almost surely the last great herd of the Southern 
buffaloes, after it had been cut off from any 
migration to the north and after five years of 
the Sharps rifle in the hands of professional 
hunters had all but cleared the plains of this 
characteristic American animal. This was in 
1878 .” 

El Matador 

Of all the animals peculiar to the Southwest, 
the javelina, or peccary—known also as musk 
hog and Mexican hog—is certainly, not even ex¬ 
cepting the horrid Gila monster and the comical 
little horned toad, the most grotesque. It is a 
pig-like creature, but although the flesh of the 
young is delicious, there is a distinct prejudice 
against it, except among Mexicans, many of 
whom prefer it to venison. The animal is pro¬ 
vided with a musk-bag on its back, with long 
stiff hairs that when it is angry stand up 
like the quills of a porcupine, and with only one 
22 



IX A PIOXEER HOME 



























































. 





Wild Life: Game Animals 

dewclaw on each of its hind feet. Javelinas run 
in droves, and when one of them is wounded or 
killed, the others sometimes make a charge on the 
hunter. Generally, however, they, like other wild 
animals, flee from man. 

They live in rough, brushy country, and seem¬ 
ingly can go indefinitely without water, deriving 
liquid from prickly pear and other cactus growth. 
In certain desert regions deer and mountain 
sheep get their water from the fruit of the cholla 
cactus. But, with the exception of the desert 
bighorn, only the javelina can get into that 
wonderful and succulent variety of cactus known 
as the visnaga, or barrel cactus. 

On the deserts of Arizona and Sonora the 
visnaga grows as high as a man, although it is 
more often found only two or three feet high. 
It is shaped like a barrel or keg. It has no leaves, 
but is armored with a thick, green corrugated 
skin that is completely protected by a mesh of 
tough, interlacing, fish-hooked thorns, thousands 
of them to each visnaga . It has a tubular root 
that gathers water during the brief season of 
annual—sometimes only biennial—rains. The 
“keg,” or stem, then stores the water. Men get 
to this water by cutting the lid, or top, off the 
visnaga, and it has saved many a human being 
from dying of thirst. The pulp inside the 
visnaga is almost as watery as that of a water- 
23 


On the Open Range 


melon. It may be chewed, or it may be hacked 
and pounded while still inside its tough case and 
the water dipped out in a cup. 

The javelina cannot cut off the lid of this 
strange water keg of the desert. But with his 
tough snout and sharp teeth he loosens up enough 
soil to get at the single root connecting the keg 
with the underground system of roots. This he 
cuts in two. The keg still sits squarely on the 
ground. He manages to topple it over. Then 
from the unarmed bottom he eats in until nothing 
but the hard shell and the terrible thorns is left. 

These conquerors of the visnaga are vicious 
little brutes, and many stories are told of their 
running men up trees and keeping them there 
for hours. Some of the stories are exaggerated, 
for when a man goes out into the woods he likes 
to think his life is in peril whether it is or not. A 
story told me by a hunter and prospector named 
C. B. Ruggles is not exaggerated. 

A few years ago Ruggles was prospecting near 
a village named Guadalupe de Santa Ana down 
in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Sonora. There 
he heard much talk about a certain javelina that 
had been depredating on the corn patches of the 
Mexicans and had defied all attempts to kill him. 
At that time not a man in the village had any 
ammunition. Dogs were numerous, but they 
were not sufficiently numerous or fierce to put this 
24 


Wild Life: Game Animals 

particular javelina in a den or to master him on 
open ground. One by one he had killed between 
fifteen and twenty dogs. He became known as 
El Matador (The Killer). At length he grew 
so bold that he would charge a Mexican riding 
a burro. The Mexican would invariably quit the 
burro and take to a tree; El Matador never 
bothered the burro and seldom kept guard over 
the tree for any length of time. 

Ruggles had a white horse, and one day while 
he was riding to investigate an old Spanish 
shaft, he heard a clacking of teeth on the moun¬ 
tainside above him. He looked. It was El 
Matador making for him with noisy ferocity. 
Ruggles had four dogs, but they were all out of 
sight. He drew rein and pulled his rifle from 
the scabbard to fire, but just as he got it out his 
dogs raced upon the scene. 

Their mode of attacking a javelina was to grab 
him by a hind leg from the rear and thus hold 
him while one of their number got to a more vital 
spot. El Matador seemed to understand this 
method of assault perfectly. He began sidling 
around the steep mountain in such a way as to 
keep his back to the slope, his hind legs bent 
down, and his tusks clear for action. Ruggles 
thought too much of his dogs to risk having one 
of them ripped open by El Matador. He had 
them so trained that at a certain shout they would 
25 


On the Open Range 


for a moment stand clear from their prey in order 
to allow him to shoot. 

He galloped nearer the big javelina and 
shouted. The dogs cleared, and El Matador 
gave a lunge, not towards them, not for freedom, 
but straight at the man on the gray horse. He 
lunged, however, but to meet a bullet that entered 
his brain. All the people in the country knew 
El Matador, and when they heard that he wa$ 
killed and saw the carcass, there was great re- 
joicing and Ruggles became a hero. 

Taken young, a javelina is easily tamed and 
becomes affectionate towards its master, but no 
watch dog ever surpassed a pet javelina in guard¬ 
ing against strangers. I know one such pet that 
got out of its pen one night and severely bit a 
man who was delivering milk at the house before 
daylight. I know of another that was trained to 
guard a herd of goats and was as effective in 
keeping coyotes and other “varmints” away as 
any shepherd dog. 



26 







Chapter II 


OTHER WILD LIFE 
El Senor Coyote 

In the tales of the Old World the most cun¬ 
ning of the animals is the fox. His counterpart 
in the animal stories among the Indians of West¬ 
ern America is the coyote. Commonplace writ¬ 
ers habitually refer to the coyote with nothing but 
contempt. Yet, as a matter of fact, a great many 
people have a strong liking for him. I like to 
hear his lonely and eerie howl in the night. I like 
to ride along and know that he is watching me 
from behind some prickly pear bush. Coyotes 
are good company. As the ballad has it, 

My parson’s a wolf on pulpit of bones. 

Although coyotes eat chickens, goats, and 
sheep, they do not molest calves to any extent, 
and in preventing rabbits from over-running the 
country they are generally a great help to ranch¬ 
men and farmers. I sincerely hope that the 
hunters hired by the United States government 
27 


On the Open Range 


to kill predatory animals will never succeed in 
killing all the coyotes. I admire them for the 
cunning with which they outwit trappers. I am 
glad that they are thrifty enough to change their 
range and go into regions where they were once 
unknown. 

Coyotes will help each other both in catching 
prey and in eluding dogs. After one has run a 
jack rabbit a while, another will take his place, 
and thus by turns the pair chase the rabbit until 
he is exhausted. Sometimes when a coyote is be¬ 
ing chased by hounds, a second coyote will run 
alongside him and cross his track in attempts to 
draw the hounds off and relieve his fellow. Un¬ 
less the hounds are trained to avoid such trickery, 
they are likely not to catch a coyote. 

Coyotes are a kind of humorous animal. One 
time a friend of mine rode up on three of them 
howling around a panther perched on a stump. 
He said that the coyotes seemed to be having a 
very joyful time teasing the panther. 

They will eat nearly anything and sometimes 
are a great annoyance to campers. They have 
been known to chew a rawhide stake-rope in two 
and thus set a camper afoot. I have seen them 
tearing at an old cowhide which even their sharp 
teeth could barely dent and which had no nourish¬ 
ment in it. 

Back in the early days of Texas two men 
28 


Other Wild Life 


named Dickerson and McGeary were crossing a 
lonesome prairie country on horseback. Dicker- 
son was a tenderfoot. While he was making 
down his pallet one night, his fellow traveler told 
him that coyotes were bad about carrying off 
shoes and hats and that he had better put them 
under his pillow. Dickerson followed directions 
and went to sleep. Then McGeary arose and, 
softly taking the shoes and hat from under the 
pillow, put them in some bushes near by. 

When Dickerson awoke at daylight and found 
his shoes and hat gone, he was greatly disturbed. 
He was not one bit pleased with the prospect of 
having to ride on for days barefooted and bare¬ 
headed. McGeary began to look for his own hat 
and shoes. He could not find them, so he pre¬ 
tended. To make the joke more real he had 
hidden them out in the bushes with the other 
articles. After he thought he had had enough 
fun at his companion’s expense, he told him what 
he had done, and they stepped into the bushes to 
get the missing gear. Sure enough, coyotes had 
come. The travelers found the hats torn to 
pieces, but they never did find the shoes. I sup¬ 
pose the coyotes had carried them off for a long 
chew. Anyway, the tables were turned on the 
joker. 

The fable that follows was told me by a hunter 
who heard it from a Mexican. 

29 


On the Open Range 


One evening an old rooster who felt himself 
neglected left the barnyard and went to roost in 
a mesquite tree some distance from the house of 
his master. When he awoke the next morning, 
he saw a coyote sitting on the ground looking up 
at him. 

“Good morning,” said the coyote. 

“Good morning, sir.” 

“I am glad to see you,” said the coyote, smiling 
his best smile. “I have been wanting to get 
acquainted with you for a long time. How are 
you feeling?” 

“I am feeling very well, I thank you,” replied 
the rooster. “I hope you are well.” 

“Yes, I never felt better,” the coyote answered. 
“It delights me to be so near you and to have 
this opportunity to tell you of my friendship 
for you. Come down, won’t you, so that we can 
have a real visit?” 

“Oh, we seem to be getting along very well 
as we are,” the rooster replied. 

“Why, you make me feel bad,” the coyote went 
on, “by being so stand-offish. Here I am over¬ 
joyed to see you; yet you won’t come near me.” 

“Well,” explained the rooster, “I am not used 
to getting out so early, and I had rather rest a 
while longer before stirring.” 

“Now, now,” the coyote pleaded, putting a 
kind of hurt feeling into his voice, “you are not 
30 


Other Wild Life 


being frank with me. Tell me the truth. Why 
won’t you come down?” 

“Well, Senor Coyote,” said the rooster, “the 
truth is I am afraid you will kill me and eat me 
up.” 

“The very idea!” the coyote exclaimed. 
“Don’t you know we live in a country that has a 
constitution and laws against killing people? 
Don’t you know that civilized folks never eat each 
other? Sir, you mistake my motives.” 

About this time the rooster looked off towards 
the house where he lived. He seemed to be very 
much interested in something he saw. 

“What are you looking at?” asked the coyote. 

“Oh, I see a man,” the rooster explained, 
stretching himself and yawning. 

“A man!” 

“Yes, a man.” Then he added casually, “The 
man is coming this way.” 

“Coming this way?” The coyote appeared to 
be getting nervous. 

“Yes, he is coming this way, and now I per¬ 
ceive he has a gun.” 

“A gun!” The coyote moved so as to put 
himself behind a prickly pear bush. 

“Yes, I can see his gun plainly now, and, I’ll 
declare, he has a dog with him.” 

“Well,” the coyote said in a hurried manner, 
“it is getting late and I must be going on home.” 
31 


On the Open Range 


“Why,” the rooster retorted, “a minute ago 
you wanted me to come down and have a real 
visit with you. Now you say that you must rush 
off. You don’t seem to me to be a very sincere 
person.” 

“I have just remembered,” replied the coyote, 
“that my wife told me I must bring our children 
their breakfast.” 

“Now, now,” taunted the rooster, “you are 
making excuses. Come, tell me the truth. Why 
won’t you stay and visit with me?” 

“The truth is,” the coyote yipped out in a very 
sharp voice, “that f am afraid the man will kill 
me with his gun or at least will make his dog try 
to chase me to death.” 

“The very idea!” the rooster crowed. “Don’t 
you know we live in a country that has a consti¬ 
tution and laws against killing people?” 

“Yes,” the coyote called back over his shoulder 
as he trotted out of sight. “Yes, I know all that, 
but there are some rascals who pay no attention 
to laws and the constitution. Adios!” 

The Fiddler and the Wolves 

In the range country the timber, or gray, wolf 
is commonly called a lobo or “loafer.” He is 
much larger and much more ferocious than the 
coyote (prairie wolf), and much more cunning 
32 


Other Wild Life 


in avoiding traps. He is also much more destruc¬ 
tive. A single lobo has been known to destroy 
stock valued at many thousands of dollars. With 
reason the breed has been hunted down until in 
the United States it is approaching extinction. 
It seems to be a fact that these big gray wolves 
have even on a few occasions attacked man. One 
of the old-time stories of the timbered regions 
of the Southern states is about the wolves that 
treed a fiddler. 

There was a negro wedding in the country, and 
Uncle Dick, “the out-fiddlingest darkey in seven 
counties,” had been engaged to furnish the music 
for the dance that was to follow the ceremony. 
It was nearly twilight before he got himself 
spruced up and then, with fiddle and bow under 
his arm, sallied forth. The road to the house in 
which he was to play led for six miles through 
heavily timbered bottom land. About midway of 
the distance was a small clearing in which stood a 
dilapidated and abandoned cabin. This was the 
only sign of human life on the entire road. 

Before Uncle Dick had gone a mile, darkness 
was upon him. It was winter time, and here and 
there under the trees were banks of snow. The 
moon was bright, and in the silence not even a 
cricket chirped. Uncle Dick hurried. He had 
been too long polishing his shoes with suet and 
shining the brass buttons on his coat with ashes. 

33 


On the Open Range 


He thought of the warm cabin and the cheerful 
company in it. He pictured to himself the wed¬ 
ding supper, and he could almost smell the baked 
’possum and sweet potatoes, the corn pones so 
hot they made the butter sizzle, and then that 
larrupin’ molasses pie! Besides, to tell the truth, 
Uncle Dick did not like the silence. 

Then suddenly he heard something that made 
him wish the silence had not been broken. It 
was the deep, long, lonesome howl of a wolf. It 
appeared to be behind him, away back yonder. 
A minute or two later it came again, and this 
time it was certainly nearer. Then it was an¬ 
swered by a howl off to one side. Next, off to 
the other side, a howl told of a third wolf’s 
presence. Uncle Dick was used to wolves and 
he was not afraid of them. Still he hurried. 

The wolves were certainly getting closer, and 
now there were more of them. Uncle Dick be¬ 
gan to remember stories he had heard of wolf 
packs and even of werewolves—those frightful 
creatures that changed themselves at will from a 
human being to a wolf. He hurried a little 
faster. If he had not been rather old, and if he 
had not been a very dignified musician dressed 
in a swallow-tailed coat that nearly touched the 
ground, he might have run. Though he did not 
run, his gait was “a kind of running walk.” 

Before long the old fiddler began to hear wolves 
34 



One of them stuck his head through the roof. Uncle Dick would 
have to do something more than whang. 

35 









































































On the Open Range 


ahead of him as well as behind him and on his 
flanks. They were drawing near enough that he 
could occasionally see their forms in the moon¬ 
light. He could hear them cracking through un¬ 
derbrush and sniffing in the dark shadows. Uncle 
Dick wished that he were in the clearing where 
the old cabin stood. It was not far ahead. 

The woods seemed fairly alive with wolves, 
and they were constantly growing bolder. One 
snapped at the lone traveler so closely that it 
brushed his legs as it darted past. To run now 
would mean death. Uncle Dick knew that his 
only chance lay in keeping steady. If he could 
just reach that clearing, he felt that the wolves 
would fall back. 

He was at the edge of the open ground when 
a big wolf came so close that Uncle Dick in¬ 
stinctively struck at him with his fiddle. The 
movement jarred the strings, which he had 
adjusted carefully before leaving home. The 
effect of the sound on the howling, yelping crea¬ 
tures was instantaneous and miraculous. They 
leaped back; and Uncle Dick, quick to notice any 
effect of music, instantly swept his hand over the 
strings. He saw one big fellow turn out of the 
moonlit road, squat down, and wail at the moon 
as if he had forgotten all about being hungry. 

Now was the chance to escape. Uncle Dick 
forgot his years, his dignity, and his swallow- 
36 


Other Wild Life 


tails, and made a break for the cabin. At every 
jump he raked his hand across the fiddle strings 
until they fairly roared. Looking back, he saw 
the astonished wolves sitting on their tails and 
gazing after him. But the sight of their prey 
running off must have renewed their savage in¬ 
stincts, for with a hideous yell they were pres¬ 
ently all up and pell-mell after him. 

At the cabin door he was but one jump ahead 
of them. He slammed it to, and with a single 
bound mounted the low rafters. The roof was 
full of holes, and, with another bound, Uncle 
Dick was upon the gable—fiddle and bow still 
in his hand. 

Only for a minute did the wolves halt at the 
door. It was not latched, and at their first im¬ 
pact it swung open. They swarmed into the 
cabin until it was literally full. They began leap¬ 
ing up and snapping. Outside the cabin other 
wolves pranced, leaped, and howled. Uncle 
Dick kicked out his feet, and he heartily wished 
that he might project all of himself into the air. 
But a part of him had to stay on the cabin roof. 

And now he thought of the fiddle that had 
saved him in the woods. He whanged the 
strings wildly. The savage brutes grew still. He 
whanged again. They stirred. One of them 
suddenly stuck his head through the lowest cor¬ 
ner of the roof, only two or three feet from 
37 


On the Open Range 


where the fiddler sat. Uncle Dick would have to 
do something more than whang. 

He steadied himself, gave one or two strokes 
with the bow across the strings, meantime making 
them a little tighter. And then with all the fervor 
of his soul, he launched into “Yankee Doodle.” 
The wolves instantly quit howling and leaping. 
They sat on their tails and grinned with pleasure. 
But as soon as the tune ended, they began their 
awful threats and attempts to reach the fiddler. 

By now, however, he had learned how to deal 
with them. Moreover, his professional pride was 
mounting. He played “Turkey in the Straw,” 
and the wolves fairly danced. He played “Swing 
Low, Sweet Chariot,” and they lay down. But 
he had to play and keep on playing. Not 
for a minute could he stop. He played 
“Pigs in the ’Tater Patch,” “Old Dan Tucker,” 
“Leather Breeches,” “The Devil’s Dream,” 
“Sally Gooden,” “Hog Eye,” and everything 
else he knew. He played some things he did 
not know. But the wolves were satisfied. 

It was about daylight when some of the wed¬ 
ding party, who had become very uneasy about 
Uncle Dick, appeared in the clearing and saw 
him sitting on the roof, kicking his feet into the 
air and sawing away for life. The wolves slunk 
away, and though Uncle Dick had missed the 
wedding supper, he was “all present and ac- 
38 


Other Wild Life 


counted for” at the wedding breakfast. He did 
not do much talking until after breakfast. Then 
he told his story, and now I have told it to you. 

Slowtrap's Panther 

Another predatory animal, worse than the lobo 
after colts and horses but not so bad after cattle, 
is the panther. Many of the old-timers called it 
a “painter.” It is known also by the names of 
puma, cougar, mountain lion, and Mexican lion. 
It is generally a very timid and cowardly ani¬ 
mal and is exceedingly shy of man. Neverthe¬ 
less accounts of its attacking human beings are 
on record. Many a boy and many a girl has 
been kept awake by stories of its blood-curdling 
scream—a scream described as being similar to 
that of a terrified woman. 

After killing its prey, the panther usually 
covers it with leaves and twigs. Sometimes he 
carries or drags it a considerable distance before 
doing this. If he is hungry, he will eat as soon 
as he has made his kill. But whether he eats im¬ 
mediately or not, he conceals the carcass for a 
future meal. 

Nearly a hundred years ago a German by the 
name of Frederick Gerstaecker spent a year or 
two hunting in what was then the wilderness of 
Arkansas. Some of this time he lived in the 
39 


On the Open Range 


cabin of a frontiersman called Slowtrap. Later 
he wrote a very interesting book entitled Wild 
Sports in the Far West. This book contains the 
strangest panther story I have ever heard or read. 
It goes thus. 

After Slowtrap had made himself comfortable 
—that is to say, after he had taken off his hat, 
laid aside his rifle and pouch, pulled off his wet 
shoes and socks, eaten a slice of cold turkey with 
corn bread and boiled pumpkin, seated himself 
with his feet to the fire, cut off a piece of his chair 
to make a toothpick, and then begun to pick his 
teeth—he asked Gerstaecker, “Well, what is the 
news?” 

As the answer was not encouraging to con¬ 
versation, he kept silent until he had smoked a 
pipe out. Then he began to tell of the day’s 
exploits. He had shot the heads off three ducks 
and killed four others. Also he had seen a 
fresh panther track. This panther track set his 
memory to trailing. 

“One morning back in Kentucky,” he began, 
“I got up early to hunt after having been kept 
awake most of the night by the cries of a pan¬ 
ther. I killed two noble bucks and was creeping 
up on a third when he got scent of me and es¬ 
caped. I was tired and sleep} 1, and so threw my¬ 
self down under a tree for a rest before going 
on. 


40 


Other Wild Life 


“I can’t say how long I had lain there, for 
unconsciously my eyes had closed, when I became 
aware of leaves rustling around me. I felt that 
the leaves were being thrown on me and soon I 
felt myself covered with them. At first I was 
only dimly awake. Then instinct told me there 
was danger. So I kept motionless, awaiting the 
result. Soon the leaves ceased to stir, and I heard 
something moving stealthily away. Cautiously 
opening my eyes and raising my head, I saw a 
panther disappear in the thicket. 

“My first act was to jump up and look to the 
priming of my gun. The beast was gone, but I 
was sure it would return. I resolved to match its 
cunning with my own. A piece of broken bough 
lay near. I dragged it to the spot where my body 
had lain and covered it carefully with the leaves 
that had covered me. Then, taking the rifle with 
me, I climbed into an oak tree near by to await 
developments. 

“I probably sat there for a half hour or more 
watching the thicket into which the panther had 
vanished. Then I saw it come out. It was a 
female with two kittens. She had no doubt gone 
to bring them to a fresh meal. I remained mo¬ 
tionless in the tree, rifle ready. She came on, the 
young panthers following, until she was near the 
covered log. Then she leaped upon it. When 
she felt it, instead of me, with her claws, she 
41 


On the Open Range 


seemed too surprised to move. I did not leave her 
much time for consideration. A ball from my 
rifle crashed through her brain, and she fell 
dead on the supposed prey without a moan. I 
killed the two young ones easily enough.” 

Now whether Slowtrap dreamed this story 
while he was dozing under the tree, I can’t say. 
That is the story. 

Prairie Dogs, Paisanos, and Rattlesnakes 

In the first place, the prairie dog is not a dog 
at all, although his bark somewhat resembles that 
of a puppy. He is a rodent; that is, a gnawing 
animal. Because he eats grass, the United States 
government has combined with ranchmen to 
destroy his species. In some places at least, the 
cheery little creatures should be allowed to build 
their picturesque burrows, flirt their tails, bark, 
scamper around, and make the world more de¬ 
lightful and interesting for lovers of nature. A 
people who spend vast sums of money to keep up 
zoos can afford some grass for villages of prairie 
dogs. The plains of the West without a single 
prairie dog town would be as desolate as “The 
Deserted Village” pictured by Oliver Goldsmith. 

The prairie dogs like company and so they 
burrow near each other, taking the earth out 
of their holes to build mounds about the open- 
42 


Other Wild Life 


ings. These mounds prevent water from run¬ 
ning in. It used to be thought that prairie dogs 
burrow to water, but the fact is that their “vil¬ 
lages,” or “towns,” are often found where it 
would be utterly impossible for any animal to dig 
to water. The prairie dog can apparently live 
for months without drinking water. Randolph 
B. Marcy, one of the early explorers of the Red 
River country, observed a single village of prairie 
dogs that extended for thirty miles in one direc¬ 
tion and contained, according to his estimate, 
more inhabitants than the largest city in the 
world. 

A kind of small owl is commonly found mak¬ 
ing the prairie dog’s burrow his home. As this 
owl is harmless, the owner of the burrow probably 
does not object to his presence. But, despite a 
belief once current, he very seriously objects to 
the presence of the rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes 
eat prairie dogs, and when one goes in a hole, the 
prairie dog leaves if he does not get caught. It is 
the puppies that the snake prefers to eat. Also, 
unless the rattler comes out, he stands a good 
chance of being imprisoned for life. 

A veteran trapper of the plains tells what he 
saw happen to a rattlesnake in a prairie dog town. 

“While I was running a line of coyote traps 
through a dog town one day, I heard a wild chat¬ 
tering and barking that prompted me to slip up 
43 


On the Open Range 


and observe what was going on, I saw a great 
number of prairie dogs circling about a rattle¬ 
snake. He was a ‘sidewinder.’ The prairie dogs 
all seemed to be making the most noise they 
could. After a while the rattler slid into a 
hole. Immediately dozens of the hole-dwellers 
began rolling dirt in on him, all the time continu¬ 
ing their noise. The snake reappeared very 
promptly. He seemed to know that danger lay 
in that hole. 

“The prairie dogs now retreated and became si¬ 
lent. For a while the snake lay still at the mouth 
of the hole, enjoying the sunshine. Maybe he 
was hungry; maybe he wanted to take a nap in 
the dark. Anyway, while everything was quiet, 
he crawled back into the hole. I thought that 
the episode was ended and prepared to leave, but 
now all at once came the little dogs again—this 
time as quiet as mice. I never saw such co-opera¬ 
tion. There was not a sound. There was no con¬ 
fusion. In no time the mouth of the hole was 
stopped with dirt. And then the prairie dogs 
tapped the earth down with their feet. That’s the 
way rattlesnakes and prairie dogs get along to¬ 
gether! Mr. Rattlesnake may have lived a good 
while down in the hole, but he certainly never 
lived outside of it again.” 

Many of the prairie dog holes are connected 
with each other underground; some are not. If 
44 


Other Wild Life 


a rattlesnake enters a hole that is connected with 
other holes, prairie clogs, so it is claimed, stop 
up the underground entrances. There is much 
yet to be observed and learned about such 
matters. 

There is much to be learned about the rattle¬ 
snake also. The first thing that everybody 
should learn is to be on the alert for him and 
never to take a chance on getting bitten. The 
rattlesnake has many enemies, such as hogs, jave- 
linas, and eagles who want to eat him—if he is not 
too large. Coach whip snakes (called also prairie 
racers), deer, and wild turkeys sometimes kill rat¬ 
tlesnakes. 

Of all the creatures that destroy the rattle¬ 
snake, the most picturesque is the road-runner, 
chaparral bird, or, as he is called in the South¬ 
west, the paisano —a Mexican name meaning 
countryman . The paisano will certainly kill and 
eat a young rattlesnake. Mexicans and many 
ranch people believe that he will find a big rattle¬ 
snake asleep, make a pen of thorns around him, 
and then cause the snake to destroy himself, the 
idea being that a rattler will not run over thorns. 
In his delightful collection of stories entitled 
Wolfville / Alfred Henry Lewis has “the Old 
Cattleman” tell this yarn of two road-runners 

i Copyrighted, 1897, by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New 
York, and used by permission. 

45 


On the Open Range 


named Jim and Bill that spied a rattlesnake 
asleep under a soap-weed bush. 

“Tharupon these yere road-runners turns in 
mighty diligent; an’ not makin’ no more noise 
than shadows, they goes pokin’ out on the plains 
ontil they finds a flat cactus which is dead; they 
can tear off the leaves with their bills. One after 
the other, Jim an’ Bill teeters up, all silent, with 
a flat cactus leaf in their beaks, an’ starts to fence 
in the rattlesnake. They builds a corral of the 
cactus all about him, which the same is mebby six- 
foot across. Them engineerin’ feats take Jim 
and Bill twenty minutes. But they completes 
’em; an’ thar’s the rattlesnake, plumb sur¬ 
rounded. . . . 

“Jim an’ Bill knows the rattlesnake can’t 
cross this thorny corral. He don’t look it none, 
but from the way he plays his hand, I takes it a 
rattlesnake is sensitive an’ easy hurt onder the 
chin. 

“No sooner is the corral made, than Jim and 
Bill, without a word of warnin,’ opens up a war- 
jig ’round the outside, flappin’ their pinions an’ 
screechin’ like squaws. Nacherally the rattle¬ 
snake wakes up. The sight of them two road- 
runners, cussin’ an’ swearin’ at him an’ carryin’ 
on that a-way scares him. . . . 

“The rattlesnake buzzes an’ quils up [coils 
up], onsheathes his fangs, an’ makes bluffs to 
46 


Other Wild Life 


strike Bill an’ Jim, but they only hops and dances 
about, thinkin’ up more ornery things to say. 
Every time the rattlesnake goes to crawl away, 
he strikes the cactus thorns an’ pulls back. By 
an’ by he sees he’s elected, an’ he gets that en¬ 
raged he swells up till he’s as big as two 
snakes. . . . At last comes the finish. The rat¬ 
tlesnake suddenly crooks his neck, he’s so plumb 
locoed with rage an’ fear, an’ socks his fangs into 
himse’f. That’s the fact; bites himse’f, an’ never 
lets up till he’s dead.” 



47 














Chapter III 


“BARS” AND “BAR” HUNTERS 

The David Crockett Tradition 

Bear stories are so much a part of the Amer¬ 
ican soil that they seem to deserve a separate 
chapter. If David Crockett had not been a bear 
hunter and had not been able to tell bear stories, 
very likely he would never have been elected to 
Congress and then have become one of the most 
noted pioneers of America. David Crockett rep¬ 
resents a time and a people, and the best parts of 
his Autobiography are about bears and bear 
hunting. 

“Bar hunting ain’t as easy as scaring a wild 
turkey, not by a long shot,” an old hunter used 
to say. Nobody who has read David Crockett 
can forget his account of following his dogs afoot 
for hours one dark night, wading an icy river, and 
then coming to the tree in which the bear had 
taken refuge. He could hardly see the creature 
in the darkness, and he could find no dry fuel to 
ignite with his flint so as to make a fire. Then 
after a shot that scared the bear down but did 
48 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 


not wound him, he and the dogs tussled with the 
fierce beast in a crack in the ground until Crock¬ 
ett finally stabbed it with his butcher knife. 

“I suffered very much that night with cold,” 
says Crockett, “as my leather breeches and every¬ 
thing else I had on were wet and frozen. But I 
managed to get the bear out of the crack and 
butchered him. Meantime I had made a fire, but 
it was a very poor one, as I could not find dry 
wood; and as soon as I lay down to sleep, I felt 
that I should freeze unless I took more exercise. 
So I got up, and, yelling with all my might, 
jumped up and down. But my blood was now 
getting cold and chills had me in their grip. I 
was so tired too that I could hardly walk, but I 
thought I would do the best I could to save my 
life, and then, if I died, nobody would be to 
blame. So I went to a tree about two feet 
through, and not a limb on it for thirty feet, and 
I began climbing up that smooth part to where 
the branches came out, then locking my arms 
about it, and sliding to the ground. The friction 
made the insides of my legs and arms feel mighty 
warm and good. I continued this exercise until 
daylight, and how often I climbed the tree and 
slid down I don’t know, but I reckon at least a 
hundred times.” 

Indeed, bear hunting was not so easy as scar¬ 
ing a wild turkey, and in addition it was the most 
49 


On the Open Range 


dangerous sport known to the pioneer world. 
Consequently boys and men alike nursed the am¬ 
bition to be known as bear-killers. Although Jim 
Baker was one of the most noted frontiersmen of 
the Rocky Mountains, the act that brought him 
real fame was a bare-handed attack on a young 
grizzly. The only weapon he had was a knife; 
the bear would not run; and Jim Baker finally 
got the better of the duel. After it was over, he 
declared that he would never tackle another bear 
without a gun. 

The Grizzly and Hugh Glass 

The black bear fully aroused was dangerous 
enough, but it was mild compared with “Uncle 
Eph,” the great grizzly—the most ferocious and 
powerful animal known to the territory of the 
United States. Until the grizzly learned how 
deadly man is, it would sometimes hold its ground 
instead of running. It was exceedingly tenacious 
of life, and a bullet that missed killing it often 
provoked a charge on the hunter. More than 
one hunter found a grizzly’s paws fatal. 

One such attack by a grizzly has kept Hugh 
Glass’s name alive for more than a hundred years 
now, and it seems destined to live for centuries 
to come. 

Hugh Glass belonged to a party of fur trap- 
50 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 


pers, led by Major Andrew Henry, who in the 
summer of 1823 were in the country drained by 
the upper Missouri River. One day he and a 
companion while passing on foot through a 
cherry thicket spied a very large grizzly bear 
rooting in the ground for pig-nuts. They both 
fired and both balls took effect without inflicting 
a mortal wound. With a roar of agony and rage, 
the bear at once sprang towards his assailants. 
They had no time in which to recharge their 
muzzle-loading rifles. 

“Hurrah,” yelled Glass as he saw the animal 
rushing towards them, “we’ll both be made meat 
of as sure as shooting!” 

Then, followed closely by his companion, he 
bolted through the thicket. The brush was so 
dense they could scarcely make their way through 
it, but the weight and strength of the bear carried 
him over all obstructions and he was soon close 
upon them. Meantime they approached the edge 
of the thicket and saw a bluff just beyond a small 
opening. Shouting to his companion that their 
only chance was to climb the bluff, Glass led the 
way to it. They were running like race horses, 
and when nearly across the opening Glass tripped 
on a stone and fell. 

As he arose, he looked up into the jaws of the 
bear, reared on its hind legs and preparing to hug 
him. Keeping his presence of mind, he called to 
51 


On the Open Range 


his companion to close in on the other side of 
the bear and shoot him with his pistol; at the same 
time he fired his own pistol. Even while it was 
being discharged, the bear knocked it from his 
hand with one blow of its paw and, fixing his 
claws deep into Glass’s body, rolled him to the 
ground. But Glass did not give up and did not 
lose his wits. Somehow he managed to draw his 
hunting knife, and then followed a duel between 
claw and steel too gory and horrible for descrip¬ 
tion. At length, his flesh as well as his clothes in 
tatters, Glass released his knife and sank in¬ 
sensible to the ground, apparently dead. 

His companion meanwhile had watched the en¬ 
counter spellbound, too excited to reload his rifle. 
Then, thinking that Glass was dead, he fled to 
camp and narrated what he had seen. The trap¬ 
pers were on the point of moving on. They had 
not long before this had a critical encounter with 
the Arikara Indians. They were in a wild and 
unfamiliar country where enemies lurked. The 
need for pressing on to the mountains was urgent. 
Major Henry dispatched two of his followers to 
bury Glass, directing them which way to proceed 
in order to rejoin him. One of these two men 
was Jim Bridger, then a very young man and 
later the most noted of all Western trappers and 
scouts. 

They found Glass still breathing, the grizzly 
52 


“Bars’* and “Bar’* Hunters 

dead across his body. They removed the monster 
and carried their companion to a spring of water. 
One account has it that they stayed beside the 
unconscious man for five days; another account 
says two days. At any rate, convinced that he 
could not possibly breathe much longer, they took 
his gun, hunting knife, and moccasins and, aban¬ 
doning him for dead, hurried forward to overtake 
their party. According to the tale they told, 
Glass was dead and buried. 

But Hugh Glass was not dead. When he 
roused, he dimly realized that he had been be¬ 
trayed. He tried to get up and found one of his 
legs so injured that he could not bear the least 
weight on it. With infinite pain he crawled down 
to the edge of the water. After he had drunk, he 
found some wild cherries growing at the spring, 
and near at hand were buffalo berries. For sev¬ 
eral days he lived on these fruits and on water. 
Meager fare, but Hugh Glass had a wonderful 
constitution and a healthy body. He gained 
strength enough to enable him to crawl on. 

Like the grizzly he had killed and that had all 
but killed him, he knew how to find roots in the 
ground. Once he robbed a badger that had un¬ 
covered some Indian bread root. Another time 
he scared three wolves away from a buffalo calf 
they had just pulled down, and with a razor that 
had been left in his vest pocket cut up some of 
53 


On the Open Range 


the meat and from the hide made coverings for 
his raw hands and knees. 

Glass was not a walking skeleton; he was a 
crawling skeleton. He crawled close to a hun¬ 
dred miles. It took him “more than forty days” 
to cover that distance. At length some friendly 
Sioux Indians rescued him. After his wounds 
were healed and he was strong again, he went on. 
No imagined ghost gliding among the shadows 
of superstitious darkness ever produced a more 
startling effect than the appearance of Hugh 
Glass, in broad daylight, made among the rough 
and ready mountain men of Major Henry’s for¬ 
tified camp deep in the Rocky Mountains. He 
forgave his betrayers; he was welcomed as one 
recovered from the dead. As long as he lived, 
the scars he bore and the tale that was told about 
those scars made him a marked man. 

The Bear that Pablo Romero Roped 

It was natural that against such a background 
of fact highly fanciful yarns with the bear for a 
hero should grow up. There was “The Big Bear 
of Arkansas,”—“a regular creation bear, and if 
it had lived in Samson’s time and had met him in 
a fair fight, it would have licked him in three 
shakes of a dead sheep’s tail.” Around the camp 
fire at night frontiersmen would exchange tales 
54 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 

about the perils they had gone through while 
hunting bear and about the intelligence of the 
creature. Then some fellow was almost sure to 
tell about the bear that put him up a tree. 

“I left my gun on the ground,” he would say, 
“and when that bar saw it, he picked it right up, 
aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger. The only 
reason he didn’t kill me was that the thing warn’t 
loaded. Well, sir, that bar was so disgusted, he 
threw the gun down and stalked off snorting so 
loud the tree I was in trembled all over. I stayed 
up there until I heard him breaking down trees 
in a bottom about a mile away.” 

And there is the story still told among the 
Mexican vaqueros of the border country. A long 
time ago a certain bear that had been offended 
by a vaquero caught him and while chewing on 
him tasted his blood. It tasted so good to him 
that he ate the vaquero up. After that he lay in 
wait for men. Frequently he was shot at, but no 
bullet ever seemed to harm him. He bore a 
charmed life. He had a white spot on his breast 
that looked like a star, and they called him Star 
Breast. He haunted a thicket where two roads, 
or trails, crossed and where travelers sometimes 
camped, for at this place was the only spring of 
water in the country and near it was good grass. 
Finally, the place became so well known on ac¬ 
count of the number of people whom Star Breast 
55 


On the Open Range 


had made away with here that it was avoided by 
all travelers. 

Now there was one vaquero in the country who 
was very brave and very desirous of winning 
fame. His name was Pablo Romero. One day 
while Pablo Romero and another vaquero were 
hunting horses on the prairie in the region of the 
cross-trails, they saw the tracks of Star Breast. 
Those tracks were so enormous that no one could 
mistake them for the tracks of another bear. 

“Listen,” said Pablo Romero, “I am going to 
kill Star Breast. I know that it is useless to try 
to shoot him, and we have no guns anyhow. But 
I shall rope him and choke him to death the way 
we rope Indians and choke them. I am riding the 
best roping horse that a reata [rope] was ever 
thrown from. He has the strength of ten bulls in 
him. This rawhide reata is new. It would hold 
an elephant.” 

Pablo Romero’s companero (companion) 
halted aghast at such a proposal. He pleaded 
with his fellow not to think of such a foolhardy 
undertaking. “Why, don’t you know,” he said, 
“that if Star Breast is proof against bullets he 
will be proof against rawhide? I daresay he is in 
the thicket now listening to us and preparing to 
come after us. Instead of riding farther towards 
him, we must turn and go the other way.” 

“No,” replied Pablo Romero, “in this country 
56 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 

lead is not superior to rawhide. A good roper, a 
good roping horse, and a good rope can conquer 
anything that breathes.” 

Pablo Romero would not be turned. His com - 
panero all but left him, but finally consented to 
stay with him and from a distance watch the 
roping. They rode on towards the thicket, and, 
sure enough, as they were approaching it, they 
saw Star Breast emerge. He stood on his hind 
legs, waved his great hairy arms, rumbled a great 
roar, and then came on. The horses ridden by 
the vaqueros were beside themselves with fright, 
but Pablo Romero, by untying his reata from the 
horn of the saddle and “playing out” a loop, per¬ 
suaded his horse to keep going. A good roping 
horse can hardly be stopped when he realizes that 
the rope is being prepared for action. The other 
vaquero had no desire to make his own horse go 
forward. He galloped to a little rise and halted 
there to watch. 

He saw Pablo Romero fasten one end of the 
reata to his saddle. He saw him with swinging 
loop dash towards Star Breast, who had halted 
and was again reared on his hind legs. Then he 
saw the loop fall over Star Breast’s head, while 
man and rider dashed on. When the end of the 
rope was reached, the horse was jerked back and 
the bear was jerked down. The loop had caught 
him under one arm and around the neck. In- 
57 


On the Open Range 


stantly, almost, the horse whirled so that he could 
get a better pull, and at the same time the bear 
recovered his upright position. 

And now came a desperate manoeuver between 
a gigantic, fierce, powerful and cunning bear at 
one end of the rope and an expert horse ridden 
by an expert rider at the other end. Several 
times the bear was jerked down. Had the loop 
not been under his arm, the pull about his neck 
would no doubt have choked him. The bear soon 
learned that by grasping the rope with his hands 
he could break the force of the jerks. Once he 
caught the tough rawhide in his teeth just at the 
instant it was tightening. A tooth was jerked 
out and he howled with rage. He did not catch 
the reata with his teeth again. He began to go 
forward up the rope towards the horse. As the 
length of the rope between the animals grew 
shorter, the horse had a shorter distance in which 
to run and therefore could not jerk so hard. He 
could not jerk the rope out of the bear’s hands. 
He was panting hard. 

Pablo Romero was a brave vaquero. He 
would not quit his horse. He had no gun of any 
kind to shoot. The rope was knotted so tightly 
about his saddle horn that he could not loosen it. 
Apparently he had no knife with which to cut it. 
Had his compailero been very brave, perhaps he 
might have roped the bear also and have pulled 
58 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 

him away from his friend. He was not that 
brave. Besides, as he said, this roping contest 
was not his. 

At last, panting and frothing, Star Breast got 
up to horse and man. The vaquero who was 
watching saw a strange thing. He saw Star 
Breast reach up and drag Pablo Romero from 
the saddle. He saw him take the rope off his 
neck, coil it up, and tie it to the saddle horn. 
Then he saw him mount the horse and, with the 
limp form of Pablo Romero across the saddle in 
front of him, ride off into the brush. That was 
the last ever seen either of Pablo Romero or of 
Pablo Romero’s horse. 


When the Penasco Ran Bear’s Oil 

A half dozen of us were in a camp up in the 
White Mountains of Arizona. Among the men 
was an old sergeant who had fought Chief 
Geronimo’s Apaches and then, after they were 
conquered, had remained in the country as a 
hunter. Another of our number was old George 
English, trapper, hunter and guide. He has 
climbed up gorges and slept in caves that not 
even the oldest living Apache has knowledge of. 
Long ago he lost account of how many bears and 
mountain lions he has killed. When acting as 
59 



60 





































“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 

guide, he likes to entertain his party in camp as 
well as interest them on the trail. 

“Talking about bars,” the Old Sergeant said, 
“reminds me of a grizzly I met with once over in 
the Mogollones. I had a good gun and I guess 
I hit him each time I shot, but after I had fired 
at him twice at close range he charged me, and 
there wasn’t a thing for me to do but run. I 
threw a fresh shell into the barrel and, looking 
back, shot the bar in the left eye. 

“He winked hard, but didn’t check a step and 
came on fiercer than ever. Then I slowed up for 
a second so as to draw a bead and let him have 
it straight in the right eye. Now he was winking 
both his eyes, but he put his nose to the ground 
and kept coming lickety-split right on my trail. 
Well-” 

But just at this point a fellow from the East 
set up a loud laugh. The Old Sergeant flared 
up immediately. 

“What are you a-braying at?” he said. “Do 
you mean to say I lie?” 

“Oh,” replied the Easterner, “if you say it was 
so, I suppose it was. You should know best. I 
wasn’t really laughing at you anyhow, I was 
laughing at the bear.” 

“What do you know about bars?” the Old 
Sergeant sniffed. “Did you ever kill one?” 


61 



On the Open Range 

“No, I never killed one,” the Easterner had to 
admit, very humble now. 

“Well, let them as has do the talking then. As 
I was saying, with a bullet in his left eye and a 
bullet in his right eye, and both eyes a-winking 
so he couldn’t see daylight, the bar took after me 
by scent. It happened there was a dead pole 
leaning against a tree so as to make a kind of 
ladder, and I guess I didn’t run up that ladder. 
For the benefit of some who might not know, I’ll 
say that grizzlies never climb trees, though black 
bars do. 

“I hadn’t more than got planted up in the tree 
when here the bar was smelling all about the 
roots, then reaching up and clawing the bark, and 
winking at me. Nearly anybody would have 
been scared, and, to be honest, I was trembling so 
hard I thought I never would get a bead on the 
bar. But after a while I did, and finally after I 
had shot him in the brain two times and in the 
heart three times he died. He was a monster.” 

Nobody laughed. George English looked very 
solemn. 

“Yes, yes,” he finally said, “there’s been some 
monstrous bars in these parts. Eight years ago 
this coming November I was hunting on Penasco 
Canon. Up there I saw the biggest and fattest 
grizzly I ever laid eyes on. I shot at it and it 
moved off. I kept shooting at it through the 
62 


“Bars” and “Bar” Hunters 

brush and rocks until I had used up all the car¬ 
tridges in my gun. I just didn’t see how I could 
help hitting it—it was as big as a barn. But it 
got away just the same, and the country was so 
rough I lost the trail. 

“Well, about a week later down on Black 
River I met one of the Ten o’ Diamonds cowboys, 
and he told me how he had just seen a dead bar 
under a juniper tree up Penasco. He said it was 
the biggest bar a body ever dreamed of. I was 
satisfied it was the bar I had shot at and killed. 
So I decided to go and have a closer look at the 
critter. I followed down the river till I came to 
the mouth of Penasco, intending to make my way 
up it the best I could. 

“It’s a dry canon, you must understand, and 
as rough as nature can get it. Well, when I came 
to the mouth of the canon, I saw about as queer 
a sight as a white man ever imagined. You can 
cut my liver out if there warn’t a trickle of grease 
flowing right into the river. I thought it looked 
like bar grease, but the idea seemed too unrea¬ 
sonable. My curiosity was terribly het up. I 
trailed right on up the trickle, going afoot, and 
the farther up the canon I went, the bigger the 
trickle got. In some places there were regular 
pools of the grease. 

“Well, when I got up about four miles I came 
to the juniper tree that the Ten o’ Diamonds 
63 


On the Open Range 


cowboy had sighted me to, and there shore enough 
the bar was, dead as Hector’s pup but still leak¬ 
ing oil out of one of the holes I had plugged in 
him a week before. I’ll tell you right now, some 
of these Rocky Mountain grizzlies get right size¬ 
able if they are not killed off too young, and they 
shore get fat.” 



64 















Chapter IV 


LONGHORNS 

The longhorns were well named, for many of 
their horns had a spread between tip and tip of 
from five to eight feet. They had long legs and 
tails too. They were lanky and could go for days 
without water. They have been known to live 
for months without water at all except what they 
chewed from prickly pear. They could run faster 
than buffaloes. Beasts of prey like the great lobo 
wolves and panthers were afraid of their horns. 
As travelers, the bovine world has never known 
their equal. They could leave the breeding 
grounds of South Texas in the spring almost too 
poor to trot, walk two thousand miles across the 
unfenced world, and arrive at their destination 
fat enough to make prime beef. 

Sancho 

On the Esperanza Creek in Frio County, 
Texas, lived a man by the name of Kerr. He 
had a Mexican wife named Maria, a jacal 
(cabin) built of .mesquite poles and thatched 
65 


On the Open Range 


with bear grass, and a few longhorned cattle. 
Among these cattle was a three-year-old steer 
spotted black and white. An animal so colored 
is called a “paint.” 

Kerr had found the paint when it was a dogie 
—a poor motherless calf—and had carried it in 
home across his saddle and given it to Maria. 
That night Maria tried to feed the helpless crea¬ 
ture milk out of a pan, but raising a calf “by 
hand” is no end of trouble. The next day Kerr 
rode around on the range until he found a thrifty- 
looking cow that had a young calf; then he drove 
her to the pen. By tying this cow’s head close 
up to a post so that she could not move about 
and hobbling her hind legs so that she could not 
kick, Kerr and Maria persuaded her to let the 
dogie suckle. After this operation was repeated 
every evening for a month or so, the cow more or 
less adopted the orphan calf for a twin to her 
own offspring. The calves were kept in the pen 
during the day while the cow grazed, and when 
she came in about sundown and they were re¬ 
leased for their supper, it was a cheering sight 
to see them wiggle their tails while they guzzled 
milk. 

The dogie was a vigorous little brute, and be¬ 
fore long, judging from the way he throve, he 
seemed to be getting more milk than the cow’s 
own calf. Maria called him Sancho, a Mexican 
66 


Longhorns 


name meaning “pet.” She was especially fond 
of Sancho, and he was fond of her. 

She taught him to eat tamales, which are made 
of ground corn rolled around some meat and 
wrapped in a shuck. As everybody who has 
eaten them knows, Mexican tamales are highly 
seasoned with peppers. In southern Texas these 
peppers grow wild, but cattle seldom, if ever, 
taste them. They leave them for wild turkeys to 
gobble down. However, by eating tamales, 
Sancho developed a taste for the little red chili 
peppers growing along the shady spots of Es- 
peranza Creek. The shucks around the tamales 
and the masa (meal) in them gave him a tooth 
for corn, and when he was a yearling he began 
breaking through the brush fence that enclosed 
Kerr’s corn patch. A forked stick had to be tied 
around his neck to prevent his getting through 
the fence. Like many other pets, Sancho was 
something of a pest. When he could not steal 
corn or was not humored with tamales, he was 
enormously contented with the grass and the 
mesquite beans along the Esperanza. As he 
grew up, he remained a pet and every night 
came close to the cabin to sleep. 

In the spring of 1879 the Shiner brothers 
made a contract to deliver three herds of steers 
in Montana. A part of their range lay along the 
Esperanza Creek, and while they were gathering 
67 


On the Open Range 


cattle Kerr asked them if they would buy Sancho. 
They bought him, road-branded him 7 Z, and put 
him in the first herd going north. The other 
herds were to ollow two or three days apart. 

That first day the herd was driven only a 
few miles. Along late in the afternoon it was 
watered, and then the cattle grazed until nearly 
dusk, when they were “thrown together”—or 
bunched—and bedded down. As was the cus¬ 
tom, cowboys then began to ride around the cattle 
so as to keep any of them from walking off. But 
Sancho did not want to lie down. He wanted to 
go back to the cabin on the Esperanza to sleep— 
and perhaps to get a tamale. A dozen times dur¬ 
ing the night the cowboys had to drive him back 
into the herd. 

When the herd started on the next morning, 
Sancho was at the tail end of it, trying to stop 
and often looking back. It took most of the 
attention of one cowboy to keep him going. 
Thus it was every day and every night. As 
Sancho was very gentle, sometimes a cowboy 
would rope him at night and stake him to a bush 
so that he could not walk off. When the herd 
stopped to graze, spreading out like a fan, the 
ribs always pointed northward, Sancho invari¬ 
ably pointed himself south. Finally he slipped 
out of the herd and struck a bee line for the Es¬ 
peranza. But the second Shiner herd coming 
68 


Longhorns 


along picked him up and he had to keep going 
north. After traveling with this second herd a 
while, he escaped only to be caught by the Shiner 
men with the third herd. They knew him by his 
road-brand, 7 Z. 

Meantime the cattle were trailing, trailing 
north. For five hundred miles across Texas to 
Red River they trailed. Then across Red River, 
across the Washita, across the South Canadian, 
the North Canadian, the Cimarron, the sullen 
Arkansas, leaving the Indian Territory (now 
Oklahoma) behind. Then across western Kan¬ 
sas, into Nebraska, beyond roaring Ogallala 
town, across the wide, wide Platte, around the 
Black Hills, across Powder River, under the Big 
Horn Mountains, across the Yellowstone, and 
clear up to the Missouri River. For two thou¬ 
sand miles, moving from ten to fifteen miles a 
day, the Shiner herds trailed. 

It’s a whoop and a yea, get along little dogies, 

For camp is far away. 

It’s a whoop and a yea, and a-driving the dogies, 

For Montana will be your new home. 

When finally, after listening for months, day 
and night, to the slow song of their motion, the 
“dogies” reached their new home, Sancho was still 
at the tail of the last herd and was still sniffing 
to the south for a whiff of the Mexican Gulf. 

69 


On the Open Range 


The farther he got from home, the less he liked 
the change. He had never felt frost in Septem¬ 
ber before. 

The Montana ranchman received the cattle. 
Then for ten days the Texas men helped his out¬ 
fit brand C E on the longhorns before turning 
them loose on the new range. When Sancho’s 
turn came to be branded in the chute, one of the 
Texas cowboys yelled out, “There goes my pet. 
Stamp that C R brand on him good and deep.” 

And now the Shiner men turned south, taking 
back with them their saddle horses and chuck 
wagons, and leaving Saneho behind. A blue 
norther was whistling through their slickers when 
they reached Frio County below San Antonio. 
A trail hand was supposed to get most of his 
sleep in the winter, for he had to ride by night 
as well as by da}^ during the summer. The 
Shiner cowboys slept. Then with the first grass 
of spring they were in the saddle, gathering cattle 
for another drive up the trail. 

“We were close to Kerr’s cabin on Esperanza 
Creek,” John Rigby, who worked for the Shiner 
brothers, told me, “when I looked across a flat 
and saw something that made me rub my eyes. 
I was riding with Joe Shiner and we both 
stopped our horses. 

“ ‘Do you know that steer over yonder?’ I 
asked. 


70 



71 


Maria just hugged Sancho and cried and made him up a batch of tamales right away.' 
















































On the Open Range 


“ ‘By grabs, it’s old Sancho,’ he chuckled. 
‘And I do believe the rascal is looking for chili 
peppers.’ 

“We galloped over, and you can hang me for 
a horse thief if it wasn’t that Sancho paint, with 
the Shiner road-brand 7 Z showing neat and 
plain behind the shoulder and the Montana C R 
as big as a sign board on his ribs. 

“Kerr told us that Sancho had been back only 
a few weeks. He said that when Sancho arrived 
his hoofs were worn down almost to the hair. 
Maria just hugged him and cried and made him 
up a big batch of tamales right away. 

“Well, Joe Shiner said that if old Sancho loved 
his home enough to walk back those two thousand 
miles, he could just stay. He lived right there 
on the Esperanza, tickling his palate with chili 
peppers and keeping fat on mesquite grass, until 
he died.” 

Sancho was just a longhorn traveler. 

Old Blue, the Bell Ox 

Animals, like human beings, have leaders. 
Hundreds of men and thousands of longhorns 
knew Old Blue, the Bell Ox. I first heard about 
him from his owner, Charles Goodnight, who 
blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail up the Pecos 
River from Texas and then Hid off two other 
72 


Longhorns 


trails and established the first ranch in the Texas 
Panhandle. 

Blue was born down on the Nueces River, near 
the Texas coast, in the spring of 1870. He was 
named on account of the deep, streaky blue com¬ 
plexion of his hair, which the vaqueros call moro. 
It was not an unusual color among cattle that 
were black and brown and red and yellow (or 
dun) and brindled and paint and smoky (or 
mouse colored) and speckled and white and 
brown and nearly every other color but orange 
and green. His mother was wild, but she was 
not an outlaw. Even as a calf, Blue showed a 
gentle disposition. 

At the age of three he was put in a herd bound 
west for New Mexico. Its route was over the 
Goodnight-Loving Trail, ninety-six miles of 
which were without water. When the herd ap¬ 
proached the Pecos River after three nights and 
two days in this fearful desert, the cowboys saw 
a thousand or more dead cattle in the alkali lakes 
east of the river. Those cattle, thirst maddened, 
had broken away from an outfit of Mexicans and 
had poisoned themselves with the alkali waters. 
The cowboys who handled Blue’s herd knew how 
to manage better. 

Above Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos the 
Comanche Indians swooped down one night, 
stampeded the cattle, and got away with six hun- 
73 


On the Open Range 


dred head. In a sharp brush next day seven or 
eight warriors paid for those cattle with their 
lives, and there was one more cowboy grave on 
“the lone prairie.” The remainder of the herd, 
about fifteen hundred head now, went on a hun¬ 
dred miles and were sold to the famous John 
Chisum at his Bosque Grande ranch. The 
Apaches were fierce that fall, and one morning 
a cowboy found Blue with an arrow in his side. 
The arrow was cut out and the sore healed 
quickly. 

The next spring Charles Goodnight bought 
Blue and five thousand other steers from John 
Chisum, divided them into two herds, and trailed 
them on up to the Arkansas River above Pueblo, 
Colorado. Blue went in the first herd. He was 
a; grown beef now, four years old. He had seen 
a lot of the world and he was a born leader. 
Every morning he took his place at the head of 
the herd and kept it. Powerful, sober, and 
steady, he understood the least motion of the 
“point men,” and in guiding the herd was worth 
a dozen hands. 

Instead of sending Blue on up to feed Indians 
at an agency in Wyoming, as he sent so many 
other steers, Charles Goodnight cut him out and 
kept him on his Colorado ranch. Cattle thieves 
proved active that winter, and cowmen had to be 
watchful. One morning while trailing a little 
74 


Longhorns 


bunch of cattle through the snow, Blue’s owner 
discovered him and a dozen other steers in a cor¬ 
ral snugly hidden in the middle of a thicket. 
Near by was a pile of hides, the brands on which 
showed that they had been “pealed” from stolen 
cattle. Blue escaped being butchered and having 
his hide taken off. 

The next spring Goodnight had one of his men 
break Blue to the yoke. A man who was taking 
a wagon to California wanted to buy him for a 
work ox, but he was not for sale. Early in the 
fall the Goodnight herd moved down on the Ca¬ 
nadian River. 

In the summer of 1876 , Goodnight decided to 
move back to Texas. He would risk the Indians 
and start a ,ranch in the wide Texas Panhandle, 
where as yet no white man had settled. With six 
cowboys he rounded up 1600 head of cattle and 
pointed the herd for the Palo Duro Canyon. In 
the lead was Blue. 

The Palo Duro Canyon is a great twisting 
gash across the rolling plains. At its widest 
place, the canyon walls are eleven miles from 
bluff to bluff, the Palo Duro stream flowing 
many hundreds of feet below the tops of the 
bluffs. Between these high walls are hills, mesas, 
and valleys covered with brush and grass. Thus 
affording water and forage, the Palo Duro made 
a natural pasture. 


75 


On the Open Range 


The Goodnight outfit drove Blue and his herd 
down a trail that had been used by Indians for 
centuries. Then they unloaded their wagon, took 
it to pieces, and carried the parts down on mules. 
That took two days. The wagon was put back 
together, loaded, and driven downstream. It 
contained enough provisions to last six months. 

Working ahead of the cattle, Goodnight and 
his men drove buffaloes out of the land they 
meant to occupy. They estimated that they 
moved ten thousand head of the shaggy beasts. 
And now while some of the cowboys rode back 
and forth across the lower end of the valley so as 
to keep buffaloes out and turn back cattle that 
might stray, other cowboys began building a 
ranch house. It was made from cedar logs 
and was the first ranch home in twenty-six coun¬ 
ties. 

A hungry band of Comanches came into the 
Palo Duro. They wanted beef, they said, and 
they got beef. But they did not get Blue. 

Meanwhile Blue’s owner had entered into a 
partnership that was within the next ten years to 
result in a ranch that controlled a million acres 
of land and seventy-five thousand cattle. Be¬ 
cause of the brand used, it was called the J A 
Ranch, and it is still known by that name. 

A ranch has to have a market for its produce. 
The nearest market for the J A cattle was Dodge 
76 


Longhorns 


City, Kansas, known far and wide as “Cow¬ 
boy Capital,” two hundred and fifty miles to the 
north. This was the nearest railroad station also, 
and there was not a fence to be crossed between 
the Palo Duro and Dodge City. When the J A 
Ranch was two years old, a herd of one thousand 
fat steers broke the first cattle trail out of the 
Panhandle for this Kansas cow town. 

Blue led the herd. But this trip was different 
from any other he had ever made. Many ranch¬ 
men drove horse herds with a bell mare to lead. 
Blue’s owner decided to drive cattle with a bell ox 
to lead. The bell was new and shiny with a red 
label upon it. The clean, fresh collar had the 
smell of new leather. When Blue got that collar 
around his neck and heard the clear ling-ling-ling 
of his bell, he was as proud as a ranch boy 
stepping out in his first pair of red-topped 
boots. 

The cattle soon learned to follow the sound of 
Blue’s bell. Attached to it was a little strap that 
could be used to tie up the clapper. At night and 
at grazing times during the day, one of the cow¬ 
boys would pitch a rope over Blue’s horns, then 
walk up to him and strap the clapper up so that 
it would not sound. 

After leading a thousand steers all day, Blue 
believed in taking life carelessly. He consid¬ 
ered himself a privileged character. He would 
77 


On the Open Range 


walk into camp right among the pots and pans 
and eat pieces of bread, meat, prunes, anything 
that the cook would give him or the cowboys could 
steal from the cook. He became a great pet. 
Often he was hobbled and left to graze with the 
saddle horses. Sometimes he was staked out at 
the end of a long rope. He preferred to bed 
down away from his followers. 

The trail work was well ordered. When it was 
time to hit the trail after the early morning’s 
grazing, Blue nosed out toward one of the point 
men. This man would loosen the clapper on the 
bell. Then Blue would give a toss of the head 
and a switch of the tail, sometimes throwing in 
a low chuckling bellow to emphasize his pleasure, 
and head north. Some rider with the voice of a 
bugle horn would call out the old Texas cowboy 
call, “Ho, cattle, who-who-who,” and the big 
steers would string out. Blue must have known 
the north star, he coursed so unswervingly. He 
was always eager to travel, and unless checked 
he was apt to walk too fast. 

When the pioneer herd from the Palo Duro 
reached the Cimarron River, they found it on a 
rampage; but Blue shouldered into it and after 
him trailed the thousand J A’s. Then six of the 
cowboys swam back to the south bank. Four of 
them hitched their lariats to the tongue of the 
chuck wagon; two of them, one on either side, 
78 


LONGHOIINS 


hitched to the stays on the bed; and thus pulling 
and guying the wagon, they brought it across. 

At the Arkansas River just south of Dodge 
City, a cold wind was blowing and the north was 
black. December was at hand. “All saddle and 
tie up,” the foreman ordered. “We’ll have trou¬ 
ble before daylight.” About midnight a storm of 
sleet and snow hit the herd. Every man was on 
his horse. The cattle wanted to drift, but the 
boys held them like a solid wall. 

At daybreak the trail boss yelled, “Untie Old 
Blue’s clapper and take the river.” The water 
was frozen out from the banks, but breaking 
through the ice and swimming the icy current, the 
big steers “made the riffle.” When they reached 
the north bank, they felt like running, and faster 
and faster they crowded Old Blue. Two thou¬ 
sand horns clacked and four thousand feet roared. 
The frozen ground fairly shook. Blue had the 
speed of a race horse, and still at the lead of his 
herd, he headed straight for the gate that opened 
into the big shipping pens. Before noon the 
beeves were loaded and on their way to Chicago 
—all but Old Blue. 

Blue stayed with the remuda and ate hay while 
the cowboys “celebrated.” If they shot six- 
shooters into the air, it was for fun and not to 
hurt anybody. Then next morning the wagon 
was loaded with chuck and sacks of shelled corn. 

79 


On the Open Range 


The grains in those sacks were gay-colored—red, 
white, and blue, and on the road home Old Blue 
learned to eat corn; in fact, he loved it. 

The weather was freezing cold, and as the out¬ 
fit turned southward men and horses both felt like 
making time. Blue was ready to travel also. He 
had the stride of a giant and could walk up with 
any horse. Sometimes the thirty-miles-a-day clip 
made him trot, but he never tired or lagged. 
Down on Wolf Creek one night a hungry band of 
Kiowas rode into camp demanding “wahee” 
(beef), but Chief Lone Wolf and all his warriors 
could not have taken Blue away from those Palo 
Duro cowpunchers. 

After this first trip up the trail as bell ox, 
Blue’s occupation for life was settled. Besides 
leading cattle to Dodge City, he was put to vari¬ 
ous uses. If an outlaw steer was roped out in 
the cedar brakes and had to be led in, he was 
necked to Old Blue, the pair were turned loose, 
and straight as a crow flies the bell ox would 
bring him to headquarters. If a wild herd of 
cattle was to be penned, Blue was put with them 
to show them the way in. Wild cattle upon ap¬ 
proaching a corral often circle and try to break 
away; but the wild ones could not break ahead of 
Blue, and his course was straight for the gate. 
Once inside a pen gate, range cattle will often 
rush for the opposite side, pushing, hooking, mill- 
80 


Longhorns 


ing. Blue never got into such jams. As soon 
as he had brought the cattle inside the pen, he 
would step aside ajid impatiently wait at the 
gate until the last animal was penned; then he 
would bolt out. 

Once John Taylor and another cowboy took 
him up on the Canadian River to bring back a 
pair of young buffaloes. They necked one on 
each side of him, and, according to Taylor, Old 
Blue was the “maddest” steer he ever saw. He 
shook his head and bellowed, utterly disgusted 
with the green buffalo yearlings. The three ani¬ 
mals twisted about until somehow both the buf¬ 
faloes were on the same side. Then Blue struck 
a course. When he wanted to go to water with 
them, he went; when he wanted to stop and graze, 
he grazed. He got them tamed all right and in 
good time he brought them in to the Palo Duro, 
where they were turned loose to help make the 
famous Goodnight herd of buffaloes. 

For eight years Old Blue kept at his occupa¬ 
tion of leading herds. Some years he went up the 
trail to Dodge City twice. Each year the steers 
he led had shorter horns and shorter legs, for the 
longhorn stock was being “improved.” Some¬ 
times the cowboys had to shoe these fine short¬ 
horns with sole leather, but never once did Blue 
limp. His hoofs were as hard and bright as pol¬ 
ished steel. All told, 10,000 head or more of the 
81 


On the Open Range 


J A cattle followed him and his bell from the 
Palo Duro to the great “Cowboy Capital. ,, 
When he was twenty years old he died. His 
horns may be seen today in the museum of the 
West Texas State Teachers College at Canyon. 

Old Blue was a Texas longhorn. In his way 
he was as truly a pioneer and trail blazer as the 
cowmen who owned countless herds of his kind 
and as the cowboys who trailed those herds into 
wilderness ranges. 

The Texas longhorn made more history than 
any other breed of cattle the world has known. 
The animal became so closely associated with the 
vast territory of Texas, and Texans were so de¬ 
pendent upon this stock of cattle for wealth, that 
they called themselves and were called “Long¬ 
horns.” The name still sticks. The driving of 
millions of longhorns over the Chisholm Trail and 
other trails northward after the Civil War did 
much to unite the North and South. Particu¬ 
larly did it unite Texas with the West. Where 
buffaloes by the millions had grazed over Okla¬ 
homa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Da¬ 
kota, Wyoming, Montana, and other western 
states, the longhorns came to occupy the land. 
They were driven into Canada, into New Mexico 
and Arizona, into Idaho and Nevada, and clear 
to the Pacific slopes of California and Oregon. 
The Spaniards had introduced cattle into Califor- 
82 


Longhorns 


nia and New Mexico as they introduced them into 
Texas, but cattle did not spread from those 
states as they did from Texas. 

These pioneer cattle have now been supplanted 
to such an extent by Herefords and other high- 
grade cattle that the mighty horned type has al¬ 
most vanished. It is good to know that the 
United States Government is attempting to pre¬ 
serve the breed from extinction. A little herd of 
longhorns, which many people travel a long way 
to see, is now grazing in the Wichita National 
Forest Reserve near Lawton, Oklahoma. 



83 







Chapter V 


MUSTANGS 

There were no horses in the Western Hemi¬ 
sphere when Columbus discovered America. The 
French and English brought a few, but the 
Spaniards introduced the stock that made Mexico 
and the western half of what is now the United 
States a land of horses and horsemen. The 
Spaniards made expeditions into the wildest and 
remotest regions, taking horses always. They es¬ 
tablished ranches for raising horses. Some of the 
horses escaped into the wild, where they reared 
a breed that knew no owner. 

These wild unclaimed horses were called mus¬ 
tangs, from the Spanish mestcno. In time they 
became incredibly numerous. Probably they 
were never so numerous as the buffaloes, and the 
extent of their range was not so wide, but they 
grazed over vast regions in such multitudes that 
travelers of the first half of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury might ride for days without getting out of 
sight of them. Usually they ran in bands called 
manadas (ma-na'-thas), each under the leader¬ 
ship of a stallion. The manadas varied in num- 
84 


Mustangs 


ber from a half dozen to a hundred animals, the 
more usual number being around twenty or 
twenty-five. 

Sometimes, however, the bands massed to¬ 
gether. In his fascinating book, Early Times in 
Texas , John C. Duval says: “A company of 
rangers to which I belonged, while in pursuit of 
Indians between the Nueces River and the Rio 
Grande, met with a drove of mustangs so large 
that it took us fully an hour to pass it, although 
they were traveling at a rapid rate in a direction 
nearly opposite to the one we were going. As 
far as the eye could extend, nothing over the dead 
level prairie was visible except a dense mass of 
horses, and the trampling of their hoofs sounded 
like the roar of the surf on a rocky coast.” 

The Plains Indians measured their wealth 
largely by horses. They made what are called 
“surrounds” to capture them. To make a sur¬ 
round, a large number of Indian braves, riding 
from all points of the compass, would run as 
many mustangs as they could assemble to some 
point, often hemming them up against a bluff 
or in a canyon, and then rope them. 

Mustangers 

The English-speaking frontiersmen employed 
various methods of capturing them. One way 
85 


On the Open Range 


was “creasing.” In order to “crease” a horse, a 
man had to be an expert shot. He aimed to 
send a bullet through the top of the horse’s neck; 
if he shot too high, the mustang would run all the 
faster and escape; if he shot too low, the mustang 
would be killed. But if he just grazed the tendon 
in the mustang’s neck, it would fall, stunned, and 
would remain stunned long enough for the man 
to secure it with a rope. 

Often the mustang colts were captured—for a 
colt cannot run fast—and raised on clabber and 
cow’s milk. Sometimes snares, made of ropes, 
were placed along trails traveled by mustangs 
and thus some of them were caught. 

Another method was to get in a tree near a 
watering place and rope some mustang that 
walked beneath. One of the most daring rangers 
the Texas frontier knew was Mustang Grey. 
His real name is said to have been Mabry 
Gray. He won his sobriquet in the following 
manner. 

While hunting buffaloes on the plains, far from 
the settlements, Gray’s horse fell, throwing him 
to the ground. The horse was so frightened by a 
charging buffalo that he jerked away and ran off. 
Gray’s companions had disappeared, chasing the 
main herd of buffaloes. He wandered afoot for 
hours before he gave up hope of finding them. 
Then he spied a wounded buffalo in a small 
86 


Mustangs 


thicket. He had retained his gun and quickly 
killed the beast. He took some of the meat to 
a pond near, built a fire, and cooked it. Tracks 
told him that mustangs were in the habit of 
watering at this place. But Gray had no rope 
with which to catch one of the wild horses. 
About this time he saw a band trailing into 
water. He quickly climbed into a tree over their 
trail and watched them. Some of them were very 
superior animals. More than ever he wished he 
might mount one. He knew well enough that if 
he attempted to walk back to the settlements he 
might perish of thirst. 

And now an idea came to him. After the mus¬ 
tangs had left, he climbed down, went to the dead 
buffalo, skinned it, cut the hide into strips, 
and plaited them into a lariat. This took 
him the remainder of the day and a part 
of the next. Animals have regular hours for 
watering, and when the time approached for 
the mustangs to come in again, Gray pre¬ 
pared to capture a mount. Having tied one 
end of the lariat to the tree and made the 
other into a loop that he carried with him, he 
climbed out on a stout limb over the mustang 
trail. He knew that he would have but one throw 
at the mustangs. He must not miss. He did 
not miss. 


87 


On the Open Range 


The stallion reared, kicked, and plunged, but 
all to no purpose. He was held fast. For a long 
time -Gray worked with him, somewhat accustom¬ 
ing him to the sight of a man. He had made a 
hackamore (a halter) and reins out of some of the 
buffalo hide, and this he finally put on the mus¬ 
tang’s head. Then he managed to get astride. 
The horse tore away, but he did not run far 
until he hit the end of the rope, which was still 
fastened to the tree, jerking himself down and 
throwing his rider. After this Gray worked with 
the animal some more, fastened the gun to his 
own back, loosened the rope from the tree, again 
mounted, and, having pointed the mustang to¬ 
wards the settlements, turned him loose. The 
prairie was open without bush or bluff. The mus¬ 
tang ran for many miles until he was completely 
exhausted. That night Gray staked him out, and 
the next morning he had comparatively little 
trouble in mounting him and keeping him under 
control. 

Thus riding bareback, he traveled for several 
days. Then, quite by accident, he came to the 
camp of his companion buffalo-hunters, who had 
given him up for lost. They at once dubbed him 
“Mustang Gray,” and by that name he still lives 
in history, legend, and song. One of the bravest 
ballads of the frontier is called “Mustang Gray.” 

88 


Mustangs 


It was sung in many a ranger camp and to many 
a herd of longhorns up the Chisholm Trail. 

There was a gallant Tex-i-an, 

They called him Mustang Gray; 

When quite a youth he left his home, 

And went ranging far away. 

Now, he’ll go no more a-ranging 
The savage to affright; 

He’s heard his last wild war whoop, 

Has fought his last brave fight. 

He ne’er would sleep within a tent, 

No comforts would he know; 

But like a brave Tex-i-an, 

A-ranging he would go. 

When Texas was invaded 
By a mighty tyrant foe, 

He mounted his mustang pony, 

And a-ranging he did go. 

Once he was taken prisoner, 

Bound in chains upon the way; 

He wore the yoke of bondage 

Through the streets of Monterrey. 

A senorita loved him, 

And followed by his side; 

She opened the gates and gave to him 
Her father’s horse to ride. 

89 


On the Open Range 


And when this veteran’s life was spent, 

It was his last command 
To bury him on Texas soil 

On the banks of the Rio Grande. 

Now, he’ll go no more a-ranging, 

The savage to affright; 

He’s heard his last wild war whoop, 

Has fought his last brave fight. 

Men who made it their business to capture 
mustangs were called mustangers. Sometimes 
these mustangers would build pens with wings 
running far out from the gates. Then, aided by 
as many cowboys as they could get to help them, 
they would run mustangs into the pen. More 
often, however, they “walked” the mustangs 
down before trying to drive them into a pen. 

In order to walk mustangs down, two or more 
men relayed each other in riding after them until 
the wild horses grew too tired to run and so 
used to a man’s following them that they would 
turn and drive as he directed. The time required 
for several men to walk a bunch down depended 
on how hard they rode, on whether or not they 
kept up the pursuit during the night, on the 
amount of water the range afforded, and on other 
conditions. 

It was even possible for a solitary man to walk 
a band of mustangs down by persistently “camp- 
90 


Mustangs 


ing on their trail” for many days, always riding 
the same horse. The mustangs would grow ac¬ 
customed to the sight of the lone rider and horse 
and in time become tame enough to drive. 

A Mustang Hunt 

The experiences a frontiersman named John 
Young had while attempting to capture some 
mustangs are both interesting and instructive. 
Mr. Young shall tell his story in the first person. 1 

One summer I located, out on the divide be¬ 
tween the Nueces and Frio rivers, a manada of 
mustangs that I decided to capture. The stallion 
was a beautiful sorrel, and the mares and pony 
stock were above the average. The bunch num¬ 
bered about thirty-five head, and with them was 
a mule. My plan was to “walk” them down and 
then drive them to a corral. 

To relay me in the walking game I took along 
a faithful negro hand named Bill Nunn. We 
made camp near a water hole that was, I judged, 
about the center of the range over which the mus¬ 
tangs would run when we got them to going. 
Camp consisted of a few provisions, a blanket 
apiece, and plenty of extra horses. The horses 

i Quoted from A Vaquero of the Brush Country, by J. Frank 
Dobie, partly from the reminiscences of John Young, published 
by the Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas. 

91 


On the Open Range 


could be hobbled; or if one of us was around camp 
and not too sleepy, they might be loose-herded. 
All mustangs had a given range beyond the limits 
of which they seldom went; when they reached 
the boundary of this range, no matter how closely 
pursued, they would soon circle back. Hence, a 
mustang hunter could count on keeping within 
the vicinity of a certain spot. The range was sel¬ 
dom more than twenty-five or thirty miles across 
and was usually less. 

Although I did not propose to do much night 
work, I timed our hunt to begin in the full of the 
moon. The morning was still fresh when I struck 
the manada, having left Bill in camp with in¬ 
structions to be on the watch to furnish me a 
change of mounts. The mustangs ran a mile or 
two and then stopped. Their next run was for 
four or five miles—and they really ran. I loped 
and trotted behind them all day and they never 
went near camp. Along in the afternoon they 
got all the water they wanted at a creek while I 
was trailing far behind, and at dark they ap¬ 
peared as fresh as they had been when I first 
flushed them. My horse was fresh also. I had 
not struck a gait faster than a gallop all day. I 
decided to keep on worrying the mustangs for 
two or three hours. 

Despite the bright moonlight, I could see only 
a short distance ahead, and the solid turf of low 
92 


Mustangs 


mesquite grass made their tracks hard to follow. 
As they frequently veered their course, I could 
not always guess what direction I should take in 
order to come up with them again. Now, some 
horses will trail other horses by smell almost as 
well as dogs can trail, provided the sign is fresh; 
however, a horse shows his trailing abilities, gen¬ 
erally, only when he is eager to get with his own 
bunch. That night the horse I was riding seemed 
to know that I needed some help in following the 
mustangs—no friends of his. In many places he 
put his nose to the ground, and when he did this I 
let him take his course—invariably the right one. 
Several times the mule among the mustangs dis¬ 
closed their exact whereabouts by whistling. 

Between ten and eleven o’clock I staked my 
horse and bedded down on leggins, slicker, and 
saddle. In a morral attached to the horn of my 
saddle I had some bread, dried beef, and coffee, 
with an empty tomato can for a coffee pot; so I 
did not go without breakfast. As soon as it was 
light enough to see, I was after the mustangs 
again. About ten o’clock Bill Nunn, who had 
been watching from the top of a hill, saw us and 
took my place. 

Our bunch of mustangs would, while running, 
frequently dash into other bunches, but the sorrel 
stallion never let one of his herd get away and the 
bunches always quickly separated. We knew the 
93 


On the Open Range 


markings on our bunch so well that we could not 
confuse them with other mustangs even in the 
distance. After they had been followed for two 
or three days, they became noticeably slower than 
other mustangs in getting away. In another day 
or two they were so toned down that we could 
almost set our own pace in keeping up with them 
—a walk or a gallop. The mule continued to be 
the most alert and the most skittish animal among 
them. 

We soon learned the habits and runs of the 
bunch so well that Bill or I could have relieved 
each other at almost any hour. Some days by 
changing mounts frequently and relieving each 
other often we pressed the mustangs pretty hard, 
but they generally got time at night to rest a 
little and to graze and sleep. 

Finally the bunch became so tired that we 
could ride along close to them and turn them—all 
but the mule. He would snort, stiffen his tail, 
and trot on ahead; apparently, he never dozed. 
However, I got close enough to read the brand 
on him and to note a collar mark on his shoulder. 
At the end of the tenth day I told Bill that the 
mustangs were walked down and that I would 
start them to the pen next morning. I told him 
to take the saddle horses and camp outfit in, and 
with a couple of Mexican hands and a bunch of 
gentle stock horses to meet me somewhere about 
94 


Mustangs 


the old stage stand on Guadalupe Creek next 
day. Before he left I caught an extra good horse 
that I had ridden once on the entire hunt. He 
was unusually fat, but I did not contemplate any 
very hard running. 

I had no trouble in pointing the manada, and 
for a while they went along fine, the mule playing 
in front as usual. Then he decided to turn back; 
so he just high-tailed himself around me, the mus¬ 
tangs following. I headed them right again, but 
again the mule led them back. He had his mind 
made up, and pretty soon I discovered that he, 
rather than the stallion, was going to manage the 
mustangs that day. When I undertook to force 
the mustangs to turn, they scattered and did not 
get together again until I allowed them to enter 
some brush. I followed them out of the brush, 
headed them right again, and again they turned 
and scattered. By now I was riding hard and 
fighting hard. I actually got close enough to 
some of the mustangs to whip them with my 
quirt. The mule was causing all the trouble, 
however. He was the most valuable animal in 
the lot, but after a while I realized that I could 
do nothing with the bunch so long as he was 
around. I shot him dead. Immediately the mus¬ 
tangs were under control again. 

We went trailing along slowly and quietly 
now. Then I noticed my horse quivering. At 
95 


On the Open Range 


once I jumped down and took my saddle off. I 
knew what that quivering meant. I stuck my 
knife in the horse to bleed him—an old time rem¬ 
edy that had virtue in it—but the blood that came 
out was thin and actually appeared to be mingled 
with melted tallow. In five minutes the horse 
was dead. I had ridden him to death, though I 
had not ridden him nearly so hard or so far as I 
have ridden many other horses. The day was 
fearfully hot. 

There I was afoot twenty-five miles from the 
pens on the Guadalupe, and not a cow ranch or a 
cow camp anywhere in the country. One chance 
and one chance only I had for a mount. About 
two miles from where I was, a man by the name 
of Sullivan had a sheep ranch. I did not know 
him personally, though I had seen him, and I 
knew him to be both a rough Irishman and a hard 
hater of all cowmen—but any port in a storm. 
When I walked up to his sheep-smelling shanty, 
the sun was two hours below the meridian. Mr. 
Sullivan was on the front gallery. He did not 
say anything about a cup of coffee, and I imme¬ 
diately told him my troubles. 

“Do you know,” he said, “what I think of a 
man that will ride his horse to death? I think he 
is a brute.” 

I agreed with him all right and said I had no 
excuse except that I did not realize how fat and 
96 


Mustangs 


soft my horse was. I told him that I had ridden 
many horses twice as hard even in hot weather 
without hurting them. 

“Well,” said Sullivan, “what assurance have I 
that you won’t kill my horse if I let you have 
one?” 

“Nothing but my word,” I replied. 

It was plain that Mr. Sullivan did not care 
about lending me a horse. Then, after he had fin¬ 
ished his lecture, he said that he did not have any 
horses up and that it would be night before any of 
his men came in with one. I merely replied 
that I would stay until I got something to ride. 

“Now, young man,” he bantered me, “can you 
ride?” 

“Yes, sir,” I answered, “I can ride, I have rid¬ 
den, and I will ride anything that wears wool, 
hair or feathers, I don’t care what.” 

I saw old man Sullivan half grin. “There’s a 
mule staked down there in the valley,” he said, 
“that’s been ridden one or two saddles. If you 
think you can ride him, take him. Sorry I can’t 
let you have a saddle, but I guess you can lead 
him out to where yours is.” 

I thanked Mr. Sullivan and went after his 
muleship. It still appeared to be mule day. The 
mule proved to be a long-legged four-year-old, as 
scary as it is possible for a mule to be. When I 
untied the rope from the tree he was staked to, 
97 


On the Open Range 


he at once wheeled and dragged me for a hundred 
yards. I stopped him, but could not lead him. 
He did not know how to lead. I would drag him 
a while and then he would drag me; sometimes we 
were going in the right direction and sometimes 
in the opposite direction. 

I hurried all I could, for I still had hopes of 
getting in behind the mustangs and taking them 
on to the corral. The leather leggins and six- 
shooter I had on did not make the weather seem 
any cooler. The mule and I were getting a little 
better acquainted and we were making fairly 
good time, when I stepped almost on a rattle¬ 
snake that had been asleep in the shade of a 
little bush. At his rattle I jumped forward as far 
as I could; the mule snorted and jumped back, at 
the same time wheeling for a run. He pulled me 
square over the rattlesnake, which was a monster, 
and the rattlesnake struck. He must have got 
a fair strike, for he hung his fangs in the edge 
of my leggins so that he held on. I jumped, 
kicked, ran, and wanted to fly. The mule was not 
moving a bit too fast to suit me—and he was 
moving. 

Directly the snake’s fangs broke off and I 
stopped the mule. I pulled out my six-shooter 
with murder in my heart, and the only reason I 
did not shoot was that I could not decide which 
to kill first, the mule or the rattlesnake. I 
98 



MUSTANGS 












































































































Mustangs 


thought perhaps I had better examine first the 
place where the snake had struck. One of his 
fangs was still in the leggins, and at once I cut a 
generous slice of leather off with it and threw it 
away. Then I reflected that the mule must have 
been actually scared—as much scared perhaps as 
I was—and that, therefore, he was not to blame 
for jumping and running. I decided further that 
the snake must have been considerably scared 
also. If I fired at the snake, I knew that the 
mule would get worse scared than ever. I seemed 
to have a sympathy for scared things; so I put the 
gun back in its holster, pulled the rope over my 
shoulder, and trudged on. 

When we got well in sight of the dead horse, I 
realized that the worst was yet to come. My sad¬ 
dle was right at the dead horse, and there was not 
a tree or a bush anywhere about to which I could 
tie the mule. No amount of work could get him 
up close enough for me, while holding the end of 
the rope, to grab my blanket and saddle. I 
worked until I was exhausted. Then while I was 
wiping the sweat out of my eyes with a bandana 
handkerchief that was wringing wet, I thought of 
a ruse that I should have thought of an hour be¬ 
fore, a ruse that all cowboys know. 

The idea seemed to freshen me, and I climbed 
down the rope until I got near enough to the 
mule to rub his nose and head. Finally I got hold 
99 


On the Open Range 


of his ear, pulled it down until I got the tip of it 
between my teeth, and held it tight. That is the 
only way to hold a mule. I weighed at that time 
only a hundred thirty-five pounds. After I got 
the mule well eared, it was comparatively easy to 
work the bandana over his head, tie the ends of 
it to the hackamore (rope halter), then slip the 
adjusted bandana over his eyes. He was blind¬ 
folded. I was now able to back him up within 
reach of my saddle. At last he was saddled and 
bridled and I was aboard. 

When I leaned over and raised the bandana 
blind so that the mule could see, his first glance 
was at the dead horse almost under his nose. He 
whirled, kicked at the fearful object, and began 
pitching. That mule seemed to take two jumps 
to any one jump made by the worst pitching 
horse I had ever ridden. At the same time he was 
kicking, and he actually kicked my feet out of the 
stirrups. He was absolutely crazy with fear. 
When he finally quit pitching, he stood stiff in his 
tracks and snorted, just snorted. I spurred him 
to make him go, and he began pitching again. 
The only reason I was able to stay on him was 
that I had to stay on him. I have no idea how 
long we had it around and around. When the 
mule at last decided to travel, the sun was nearly 
down, the mustangs were nowhere in sight, and I 
felt mighty weak and lonesome. 

100 


Mustangs 


With that mule there was no use trying to 
camp out in the hope of finding the mustangs 
next morning. I felt it in my bones that if I dis¬ 
mounted, I should never be able to ride him again. 
I did not want to go back to the sheep ranch. I 
pulled out for the camp where good old Bill 
Nunn was no doubt anxiously awaiting me twen¬ 
ty-five miles away. Nobody nowadays knows 
how far twenty-five miles is; the only way to 
know is to ride a wild, stubborn, idiotic mule for 
twenty-five miles on a dark night without a trail 
to follow. 

The night was cloudy. Without a star or any 
other object to guide by, keeping the mule in a 
direct course proved to be no simple matter. He 
had his head set on going back to the sheep ranch 
or somewhere else. Two strata of clouds were 
flying overhead, one going east and one going 
west. Once in a while a patch of stars shone. 
It was only by watching the clouds and the oc¬ 
casional stars that I could keep any sense of direc¬ 
tion. 

As long as I sat still in the saddle, the mule 
jogged along fairly well, but every time I shifted 
my weight, he shied and resumed his bucking. I 
don’t think I have ever been quite so near exhaus¬ 
tion as I was that night. The east was lighting 
when I entered a stage road. Then for the first 
time I struck a gallop, and by sunrise I was in 
101 


On the Open Range 


camp. Bill and his Mexicans were all ready to 
start out on a hunt for me. 

After I had drunk about a half gallon of black 
coffee and consumed hoecakes hot from the skillet 
and fried bacon in proportion, I felt really gen¬ 
erous. I called Bill Nunn over to where I was 
squatted and told him that I would make him a 
present of my interest in all the mustangs left in 
Texas; in addition, I offered to lend him saddle 
horses to ride while he caught them. I was 
through with mustangs forever. Bill took me up 
on part of the offer, for he got one of the Mexi¬ 
cans to help him and not long afterwards brought 
in the manada of mustangs we had learned to 
know so well. He sold them for a very fair price. 


The Pacing White Steed 

In the horseback world, where, as the saying 
went, “a man on foot was no man at all” and a 
good horse was to be prized next to a good name, 
some of the mustangs won a fame that has en¬ 
dured to this day. Perhaps the two most famous 
of all mustangs were Black Devil and the White 
Steed of the Prairies. The black was vicious and 
feared; tradition has it that on one occasion he 
ate a Kiowa Indian, and another time chased 
two ranchers into their dugout. 

102 


Mustangs 


The White Steed of the Prairies, on the other 
hand, was generous and gallant. He ranged 
from the Rio Grande to the River Platte, from 
Nevada to Arkansas. During the fifty years or 
more that men vainly tried to capture him he 
went under many names: The Ghost Horse of 
the Plains, the Pacing White Stallion, the White 
Steed of the Prairies, the Phantom Wild Horse. 
Whatever his name, he never tarried to hear it. 
He could pace faster than any other horse could 
run, and, once startled, he ran straight out of the 
country, never circling back as most mustangs 
circled. He never tired. He was so cunning 
that no trap could catch him. Rewards of a thou¬ 
sand dollars and more were offered for him, but 
he kept his liberty. This passion for liberty 
made liberty-loving men admire him all the more. 
They admired him, too, for his grace, his fire, 
his speed, his endurance, and his intelligence. He 
was supreme above all other mustangs. 

One time, the story goes, some German immi¬ 
grants lately arrived in Texas were moving up 
the Guadalupe River in search of a place to set¬ 
tle. They traveled in wagons, single file. The 
family in the last wagon had a very gentle old 
gray mare that followed along without rope or 
halter. Every once in a while she would stop to 
grab a mouthful of particularly green grass. She 
was stupid and lazy and her ears flopped, but she 
103 


On the Open Range 


was faithful. On her back she carried two sacks 
of corn meal so arranged that they made a 
humped-up platform. 

The wagon was running over with such things 
as settlers carried—things like beds and bedding, 
pots and pans, provisions, a few pot plants, and 
a great many children. The liveliest of the little 
girls was named Gretchen, who was eight or nine 
years old. In such a crowded wagon the children 
at times were anything but good-humored. One 
day little Gretchen told her father that she 
wanted to get out and ride the old gray mare. 
He could see no harm in this. So he lifted 
Gretchen up on the platform of corn meal sacks 
and tied her there with a rope in such a way that 
she would be comfortable and could not fall off. 
The old mare hardly batted an eye, and with 
Gretchen on her back she followed along behind 
the wagon as usual. 

That afternoon, however, one wheel of the 
wagon was wrenched in a buffalo wallow, and a 
halt had to be made for repairs. Gretchen was 
asleep at the time, firmly tied on her pallet of 
corn meal. She did not know when the old mare 
grazed out of sight down a mesquite draw, and 
her parents did not notice. 

After dozing she knew not how long, she awoke 
with a start. The lazy old mare was lumbering 
along in a gallop behind a prancing, neighing, 
104 


Mustangs 


pacing white horse with cream-colored mane and 
tail. Gretchen tried to stop the old mare, but she 
had no bridle or halter. She tried to jump off, 
but she was tied on, and the knots of the rope 
were beyond her reach. 

After they had trotted and galloped many 
miles, the white horse all the time pacing ahead 
“like a rocking chair,” they came to a large bunch 
of mares. These were the White Steed’s manada. 
The mares came out to greet their new com¬ 
panion. They were very cordial in their greet¬ 
ings. And right here I want to say that no hu¬ 
man beings can be more cordial towards each 
other than horses. I have seen a pair of horses 
who had been separated from each other and then 
allowed to get together again, rub each other’s 
noses, caress each other’s necks, nicker, and other¬ 
wise show the most sincere affection and cordial¬ 
ity in the world. 

The wild mares were, indeed, cordial to the 
old gray mare that their proud leader had 
brought in. They seemed not to notice little 
Gretchen. Presently their noses touched the 
meal sacks. A little of the meal had sifted 
through and could be tasted. They tasted it. 
Doubtless, it was the first taste they had ever had 
of corn. But it was good! 

The mares began to nip at the meal sacks, and 
when they did they nipped Gretchen’s bare legs. 

105 



106 




He grasped the collar of her dress in his teeth and lifted her gently upon the mare. 



















































Mustangs 


She screamed. She expected to be chewed 
up right away, even if the mares meant no 
harm. But at her scream the Pacing White 
Steed was with one bound beside her. He was as 
considerate as he was intelligent. He drove the 
wild mares off. Then with his teeth he chewed 
in two the ropes that bound Gretchen. After this 
was done, he took her gently by the collar of her 
dress, very much as a cat takes one of her kit¬ 
tens, and set her down upon the ground. 

It was about dark now, and coyotes were be¬ 
ginning to howl. Little Gretchen was afraid, 
though she knew that coyotes never harm people. 
She made a kind of nest in some tall fragrant 
grass near a mesquite bush and, after crying a 
little while, fell asleep. 

When she awoke, the sun was high and not a 
horse was in sight. She was hungry. She went 
down to a water hole that she saw close by and 
drank water for breakfast. She had heard that a 
person lost on the prairies had better stay in one 
place until he “found himself” or until someone 
found him. She had no hope of finding herself, 
but she did hope that her papa would find her. 
She knew nothing about the frontier art of fol¬ 
lowing the tracks of one horse through a maze of 
tracks made by other horses, and she did not 
know that her father and his companions, all of 
them new to the country, were almost as igno- 
107 


On the Open Range 


rant of the art as she was. She remained near the 
water hole. 

Noon came and still there was no horse or per¬ 
son in sight. Gretchen was hungrier than ever. 
She gathered some agrita berries (called also 
wild currants), but the thorny leaves pricked her 
fingers so much that she could not get enough of 
them. Evening came, and still Gretchen was 
absolutely alone. She gathered some sheep sorrel 
for supper and drank more water. Darkness 
came, and the coyotes set up their mournful howl¬ 
ing. It was a long time before Gretchen went 
to sleep on her grassy bed. 

When she awoke the next morning, there 
standing over her, sound asleep and ears flopped 
down, was the old gray mare. Gretchen was as 
glad as the red-bird singing over her head. She 
jumped up and as soon as she had washed her 
face, ran to the mare and tried to get on her. But 
the old mare was too tall. Then Gretchen 
grasped her by the mane and tried to lead her to 
a log that lay near at hand. If she could 
get the old mare beside it, she could use it as a 
step for mounting. But the stupid old mare 
would not budge. After pulling, coaxing, and 
vainly jumping for a long time, Gretchen broke 
down and cried. 

She was leaning against the shoulder of the 
old mare sobbing, when she heard swift hoof-beats. 

108 


Mustangs 


She looked up and saw emerging from some 
bushes the beautiful white steed. He came arch¬ 
ing his neck and pacing with all the fire of a mus¬ 
tang emperor, but there was something about him 
that prevented Gretchen from being in the least 
' frightened. He came right up to where she was, 
grasped the collar of her dress in his teeth, and 
lifted her gently upon the mare. Then he must 
have told the old gray mare to go home. At least, 
the old gray mare went—went with Gretchen but 
no corn meal. 

Home was the camp by the buffalo wallow 
where the wagon had broken down. Gretchen’s 
parents were so happy at having her restored to 
them that they did not mind the loss of the meal. 
After Gretchen had told her adventures, she 
showed the nipped places on her legs. 

In after years she told the story many, many 
times. When she was an old woman and some 
of her grandchildren acted as if they did not be¬ 
lieve her, she would show them the small, faint 
scars on her legs where the wild mares had nipped 
her. Then they would have to believe. 


109 


Chapter VI 


HORSE STORIES 

No mustang could ever mean to a man or 
a woman as much as an intelligent and faithful 
domestic horse meant. In the horseback world 
west of the Mississippi River, a fine, gentle horse 
was valued more highly than many mustangs. 
A good horse often meant life itself. “A man 
on foot is no man at all,” so a proverb of the 
range went. Even in this age of automobiles and 
airplanes the memory of some of those horses is 
preserved with pride and gratitude. Nor has 
the horse been altogether supplanted; on mil¬ 
lions of acres of ranch lands men still ride and 
love good horses. 

Mistus and the Panther 

The Henry plantation was among the first es¬ 
tablished on the Brazos River in Texas. One 
morning while Elizabeth Downing Henry was 
alone here with her children and slaves, Mr. 
Henry being absent on business, a man rode up 
before daylight to ask aid for a sick neighbor who 
110 



Ill 


The colt sprang to its mother’s side, the panther in pursuit. 












































































































































































































On the Open Range 


lived several miles away. Mrs. Henry was 
known far and wide as the best doctor in the 
country. She had a little carpet bag in which 
she kept her medicines; in addition she knew how 
to make healing teas and poultices out of what 
was around her. She could not refuse to go. 
She told the messenger that she would leave as 
soon as she could get ready; he left. 'At once 
she ordered her fine-blooded and intelligent mare, 
Mistus, saddled. Mistus was a midnight black 
and at this time had a young colt. In those days 
women rode side-saddles. 

The east was barely beginning to turn gray 
when Mrs. Henry, with her hag of medicine on 
the saddle, a pistol in her belt, a three-months-old 
baby in one arm, and the reins in her free hand, 
set out, the colt following. She had ridden about 
two miles and the dawn was now breaking, when 
she saw a panther crouched on a limb of one of 
the many trees that overhung her path. It was 
almost over her. She was so near it that she 
could see its whiskers and the yellow light of its 
shifty eyes. She saw its long tail lashing from 
side to side—the motion a panther makes while 
preparing to spring. It was too late to check 
Mistus. With a cry and a dig of her heel, Mrs. 
Henry dashed on under the panther. 

Just as she cleared the limb, she looked back. 
The panther had leaped for the colt but had 
112 


House Stories 


missed it. The colt sprang to its mother’s side, 
the panther in pursuit. Quicker than thought, 
Mistus whirled and, now kicking, now pawing, 
began fighting the panther. Her rider, with the 
infant still held tight in one arm, pulled on the 
reins, but Mistus must not have felt the pull, for 
her strong white teeth ground into the panther’s 
neck. Mrs. Henry was so occupied with holding 
her baby and keeping a seat on the plunging 
mare that she had no time or opportunity to use 
the pistol she carried. But she did manage to 
aid Mistus by striking the panther with her rid¬ 
ing whip. The combat did not last long before 
the defeated panther slunk away into the brush. 

And now, with the colt keeping close beside 
its mother, Mrs. Henry rode on to help the sick 
neighbor. Her descendants still live on the 
Brazos plantation, and in their memories Old 
Mistus is still very much alive. 

Shanghai and Selim, Indian Fighters 

Some horses won fame for the manner in 
which they outwitted Indians. The Coman- 
ches, Iviowas, Apaches, and other Plains In¬ 
dians habitually made horse-stealing expeditions 
among the settlers on the frontiers nearly every 
month during the light of the moon. 

A noted Indian fighter named Alex Brown 
113 


On the Open Range 


had a horse he called Shanghai. Alex claimed 
that he could tell when Indians were in the coun¬ 
try by Shanghai’s galloping up to his door and 
neighing. The horse could hear and smell In¬ 
dians a long way off. One night the Indians 
caught Shanghai. The next morning he raced 
up to the house of a settler about five miles away 
from his home with a lariat dragging from his 
neck and a war chieftain’s full regalia tied to his 
back. What had happened to the chieftain him¬ 
self nobody ever knew, but his fine shield brought 
in by the horse sold for twenty dollars. 

Once while swimming the Colorado River on 
Shanghai, Alex Brown had to leap from his back 
in order to dodge a tree floating down stream. 
He managed to reach a rock near the middle of 
the river, but, as he was not a good swimmer, he 
feared he could never gain the shore alone. The 
horse meanwhile had swum to the bank and stood 
there looking towards his master. 

“Here, Shanghai, here!” his master called. 

Immediately almost the animal plunged into 
the swirling waters and made his way to Alex, 
who mounted him and was carried safely out. No 
wonder Alex loved Shanghai. 

One of the most famous horses of Indian days 
was Selim. He belonged to a captain of the 
Texas rangers named Jeff Maltby. This is how 
Captain Maltby found him. 

114 


Horse Stories 


He was raising a company of rangers to go 
against a band of Kiowas and Comanches, led 
by Chief Big Foot, who had long been raiding 
in the country, stealing horses and killing people. 
While he was nearing his own home to tell his 
wife goodby, Captain Maltby saw a stranger 
riding down the road on a noble-looking iron 
gray horse. 

“Mister,” he said, as the two men met, “how 
old is that horse you are riding?” 

“Six years old.” 

“What stock is he out of?” 

“He belongs,” the stranger answered, “to the 
best racing stock in Arkansas. He has never 
been beaten on the track.” 

“Is he gentle?” 

“Yes, he is as gentle as a dog and as brave as 
a lion.” 

“What is his name?” 

“His name is Selim. He is named after the 
horse that young Scotch Macdonald, one of Gen¬ 
eral Marion’s men, rode in the Revolutionary 
War.” 

“I need that horse and want him,” Captain 
Maltby said. “What will you take for him?” 

“Well,” the stranger replied, “I do not wish 
to sell him. But I am a new-comer here. I am 
going to settle on some land and build me a home. 
I will need a pair of work horses. If you will 
115 


On the Open Range 


give me a good pair of horses and one hundred 
dollars in money, I will let you have Selim.” 

The trade was made at once, and the very next 
day Captain Maltby rode Selim off at the head 
of his company of rangers in pursuit of Big 
Foot’s band of Indians. 

One night the rangers camped and hobbled 
their horses, two men being detailed to guard 
them. While they were eating supper, about 
twenty-five Indians suddenly burst upon the 
camp, yelling, shooting, and making such a 
hideous noise that the horses stampeded. The 
object of the Indians was to get the horses. The 
rangers grabbed their guns and began running 
after the Indians and shooting, but in the dark¬ 
ness they could not see their targets. The horses 
were gone and the rangers were afoot. 

“Now we will have to carry our saddles and 
walk back to the settlement to get more horses,” 
they complained. 

“No,” Captain Jeff spoke up, “you will not 
have to walk. In the morning Selim will be here. 
I will ride him to the settlement and get some 
horses and drive them back here for you to ride. 
You are horse soldiers and not foot soldiers.” 

The men were still talking when they heard a 
distant rumbling of hoofs. They sprang to their 
feet, some of them thinking the Indians were 
making another attack. But as the sounds came 
116 


House Stories 


nearer, Captain Maltby burst into a laugh. The 
tone and beat of those hoofs were familiar music 
to his ears. 

As the hoof beats came nearer, he cried, “Here, 
Selim, my boy! Selim! Come here!” 

A keen neigh was heard in answer, and Selim 
a minute later dashed up to where the men stood. 
In a gentle voice the Captain now said, “Come 
here, Selim.” The horse walked forward and 
with a gentle whinny placed his head on his mas¬ 
ter’s shoulder. Tied about his lower jaw was a 
piece of rawhide rope, showing that some Indian 
had caught him and tried to ride him. 

“With a piece of rope like that,” Captain 
Maltby remarked, “an Indian could no more ride 
Selim than I could fly like an eagle. He is a 
one-man horse. Not even one of you could ride 
him, much less an Indian.” 

What the Captain said was true. Selim would 
allow no man but his master to stay on his back 
and he would fight any other man who tried to 
get on him. 

Captain Maltby rode Selim back to the settle¬ 
ment, procured other horses, and before long the 
rangers were once more in the saddle. 

During a campaign some time after this, Cap¬ 
tain Maltby’s company came one evening to a 
little town. Indians had recently been there, and 
the citizens were so glad to see the rangers that 
117 


On the Open Range 


they feasted them and put their horses in stables. 
Selim was put in the best private stable in town. 
When morning came, the door was found open 
and the horse gone. Moccasin tracks showed 
plainly in the horse lot. 

Borrowing a horse to ride, Captain Maltby set 
out to trail down the marauders. He said as he 
left, “My own horse will be back here before 
night if the Indians do not kill him, for the red¬ 
skin does not live that can ride him.” 

The chase that followed was hard and far. 
Maltby’s men rode sixty miles in seven hours. 
They had no food with them, and that night they 
killed a calf and roasted the meat. When they 
got back to the little town the next day, there 
was Selim eating corn. 

The Captain dismounted and, going directly to 
him and patting him on the neck, said, “Selim, 
my boy, did you bust another Indian?” 

Selim answered with a low, well-satisfied 
whinny, as much as saying, “You bet I did.” 

Shooting buffaloes with a six-shooter from 
horseback was a most exciting and also a very 
dangerous sport. The hunter had to ride along¬ 
side the buffalo, and when a bull was wounded 
he was likely to whirl and gore his pursuer. But 
Selim was quicker than any bull, and his master 
delighted to shoot buffaloes from his back. 

After the last Indian had been expelled from 
118 


Horse Stories 


the frontier, Selim carried his master home. Then 
he became an expert “roping horse,” for he could 
run up to the wildest, fastest, and most swiftly 
dodging cow or bull, and when it was roped, 
would hold it as firmly as a rock. He lived to 
be “old and full of years.” When he died, Cap¬ 
tain Maltby and all his family felt that they had 
lost one of their best friends. 

A Race and a Whinny 

One of the most remarkable horse stories I ever 
heard in connection with Indians is about Bonnie 
Belle. 

Bonnie Belle belonged to Frank Henderson, 
who had a ranch in Erath County, Texas. Below 
his ranch was a line of rough hills through which 
there was a well-known pass. One day while 
Henderson was riding alone in search of cattle 
to the south of the hills, he saw two separate 
bands of Indians closing in on him. He struck 
a run at once for the gap in the hills, but long 
before he reached it, he realized that the Indians 
had so much the advantage of him that he could 
never get by them. To one side of this gap was 
a narrow, rough pass that he knew about and 
that, he hoped, the Indians did not know about. 

He veered Bonnie Belle to this place. She 
was moving much more rapidly than the Indians, 
but they still had the advantage in position. They 
119 


On the Open Range 

evidently thought that they had Henderson 
hemmed against the hills, for just as he neared 
the secret gap, he shot ahead of the lead Indians, 
who yelled as they closed in. Bonnie Belle’s 
breath was coming short and labored. Hender¬ 
son knew that she could not carry him much 
farther. 

The pass he entered was so narrow that the limb 
of a tree overhung it completely. Just as he passed 
under the limb and was hidden a minute from 
the yelling Indians, he halted, jumped off 
quickly, removed the bridle from Bonnie Belle’s 
mouth so that she could not become entangled 
in the reins, gave her a slap, together with a word 
of encouragement, and dodged into some bushes. 

He heard the hoofs of Bonnie Belle as she 
raced on riderless among the rocks. He heard 
and from his hiding place saw the Indians dash 
by in hot pursuit, following the mare, which at 
that time they could not see though they could 
hear her. Then the sounds died away. 

This was along in the afternoon. Henderson 
kept in his hiding place. He expected to wait 
until darkness came to slip out and make his way 
home afoot. He had no hope of ever seeing Bon¬ 
nie Belle again. When the sun was about down, 
he heard the Indians coming back. He saw them 
ride slowly through the pass, their horses ex¬ 
hausted. He wondered if they had killed Bonnie 
120 


Horse Stories 


Belle. His blood boiled at the thought, but he 
kept still. He suspected that Indians might be 
waiting on every side to trap him. 

Many hours later, just as he was about ready 
to steal forth, he heard a low whinny. He recog¬ 
nized it as plainly as a child recognizes its 
mother’s voice. He answered, speaking very 
low. He slipped down into the pass, and then a 
soft nose was against his breast. He replaced 
the bridle on Bonnie Belle, and both of them got 
safely home. 

Saved from a Stampede 

We hear much about the wild and fierce horses 
ridden by cowboys. It is true that there are and 
have been many untamed and untamable horses 
on the range. Also, there have been many gentle 
horses loved by their cowboy riders. For in¬ 
stance, there was Buck, who saved the life of a 
trail driver named Livingston. 

For many nights the weather had been stormy 
and the -cattle restless. The men with the herd 
had not pulled their boots off for a week. Some 
of them had rubbed tobacco juice in their eyes 
to keep awake. The cattle must be held. 

One night after he came off herd, Livingston 
rode to a plot of thick grass near by and threw 
himself on the ground to sleep. He left his horse, 
Buck, saddled, for he knew that the cattle might 
121 


On the Open Range 


run at any minute. But he took the bridle off 
and wraf>ped one end of the stake rope around 
his wrist so that Buck could graze. As soon as 
he touched the ground almost, he was asleep. A 
little later he awoke with the sound of a roar in 
his ears like that of a stormy sea beating on 
rocks. The earth beneath him was shaking and 
trembling. The herd was stampeding straight 
towards him! Before he was awake sufficiently 
to realize his danger, he became aware that Buck 
was standing right over him, his forefeet on one 
side of him and the hind feet on the other, facing 
the maddened cattle. As the leaders approached 
the faithful cow horse standing “like a stone 
wall” in front of them, the herd split, leaving the 
man untouched. Many times after this Living¬ 
ston declared there was not money enough in the 
world to buy Buck. 



122 
















Chapter VII 


RIDES AND RIDERS 

By introducing the horse to the Americas the 
Spaniards made a vast portion of what is now 
the United States a horseback world. The South¬ 
west owes as much to the mounted conquistadores 
(the conquering explorers) of Spain as it owes 
to the Pilgrim Fathers. This land was not only 
explored, but it was conquered and developed by 
men on horseback. And here it is well to remem¬ 
ber that ranching, which was the first form of 
development, came from the Spaniards. 

The early trappers and traders among the wild 
Indians of the Rockies and the Plains went out 
on horses. A pack train of mules driven by men 
on horseback beat out the great Santa Fe Trail 
from the Missouri River to the capital of New 
Mexico. The first fast mail across the North 
American continent was the Pony Express. It 
has been said that “civilization follows the plow.” 
West of the Missouri River the plow followed 
cowboys who drove millions of cattle up from 
Texas to stock a dozen states. The rangers and 
sheriffs who kept law on the frontiers were horse- 
123 


On the Open Range 


men also. These riders left a tradition behind 
them that makes the fide of Paul Revere seem 
tame. Perhaps some day some of the stories of 
their rides will, like Paul Revere’s story, be put 
into ballads. 


The Pony Express 

The Pony Express line stretched for approxi¬ 
mately two thousand miles from St. Joseph on 
the Missouri River to San Francisco against the 
Pacific Ocean. It was established in 1860 and was 
intended f or a mail line. The postage on one letter 
alone was five dollars, and the letter had to be 
written on very thin paper. In order to free the 
horses for the long runs, the burden on their 
backs was cut to the last ounce; the riders were 
trim and light. They raced at the speed of fif¬ 
teen miles per hour. Every twenty or twenty- 
five miles along the route there was a relay sta¬ 
tion at which riders could change mounts. They 
took hardly a minute to do this. Before the Pony 
Express was established, it usually took a month 
or more for a letter to go from the eastern part 
of the United States to California. The schedule 
for the Pony Express was ten days. The riders 
were so swift and the system was so well organ¬ 
ized that the time was cut down to nine days. 
When the news went over the land that a letter 
124 


Rides and Riders 


could cross the continent in nine days, Americans 
knew that the day of speed had been reached. 

After all, speed is always comparative. The 
airplane can now within twenty-four hours’ time 
travel over space that it took a score of Pony 
Express riders nine or ten days to cover. But 
the airplane is not so swift as the revolving earth. 
And actually a man riding a swiftly running 
horse feels that he is moving faster than the air 
pilot feels in his plane. Any one wishing to ex¬ 
perience the sensation of motion should ride 
horseback. A hundred miles may not seem far 
to a girl or boy used to automobiles and air¬ 
planes. A way to find out how far that distance 
is, is to ride it on a horse. 

One of the most famous of the Pony Express- 
men was Buffalo Bill. He rode 322 miles in 
twenty-one hours and forty minutes, using on the 
trip twenty-one head of horses. At the relay sta¬ 
tions he would stop just long enough to pull his 
saddle and mail pouch off one horse and put them 
on another. Men who kept the stations helped 
him. Then he would be off again like the 
wind. 

Felix X. Aubry was not with the Pony Ex¬ 
press, but he made what is probably the most 
remarkable ride recorded in the great riding 
tradition of America. He rode eight hundred 
miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Inde- 
125 


On the Open Range 

pendence, Missouri, in five days and sixteen 
hours. He rode alone, sometimes driving extra 
horses before him. He had sent a few men ahead 
of him to hold a change of horses in readiness, 
but there was no system of relay stations for him 
to rely upon. During this ride he lay down to 
sleep only two hours. He dozed from time to 
time on horseback. He ate while on the gallop. 
At one place where he expected to get a fresh 
horse he found that Indians had killed the man 
in charge and driven the horses away. He kept 
on riding. He was on his beautiful mare Dolly, 
and he rode her one hundred and fifty miles with¬ 
out resting. Felix X. Aubry was a good rider 
not because he could “stick like a postage stamp” 
to a bucking mustang, but because he took care 
of the horse he rode and could cover vast dis¬ 
tances without tiring his mount down. 

A Cowboy with a Money Belt 

A set of very large books might be filled with 
tales about cowboy rides. Here is one that a little 
old man in a neat white hat told me at a meet¬ 
ing of the Trail Drivers of Texas down in San 
Antonio. He would have been taken for a cow¬ 
man anywhere. He answered to the name of 
W. B. Slaughter, but some people called him 
“Buffalo Bill” Slaughter, for one time he drove 
126 


Rides and Riders 

a herd of a hundred buffaloes from the Texas 
Panhandle to Fort Garland, Colorado. 

When W. B. Slaughter was fifteen years old, 
his father sent him on a ride of several hundred 
miles with $20,000 in gold that had been paid for 
beef cattle. He carried the money in a pair of 
saddle pockets. But the ride he liked best to talk 
about was the one on which he carried $25,000 in 
gold in a belt around his waist. 

“Just before grass started in the spring of 
1875,” he began his story, “my brother, J. B. 
Slaughter, and I came down from North Texas 
to Mason County and contracted for fifteen hun¬ 
dred head of steers at $16 apiece. The cattle 
were to be delivered two months later. I was 
twenty-three years old and had already handled 
two herds up the Kansas Trail. I figured that 
we could make some money out of this bunch. 

“From the day we made the contract, cattle 
went up, and by the date set for delivery those 
$16 steers were worth $26. Naturally the owners 
were feeling down-hearted over having sold so 
cheaply. If they could break the contract, they 
would make $15,000, and they were the kind of 
men to break contracts. When we got to Mason 
with our outfit to receive the cattle and start up 
the trail, we found a group of sullen cowmen. 

“ ‘Have you got the money to pay for these 
cattle?’ they demanded first thing. 

127 


On the Open Range 


‘‘We answered that we had the money. 

“ ‘Show it.’ 

“At this time the ranch people were beginning 
to use bank drafts instead of carrying coin 
around in Mexican morrals (fibre bags) and on 
pack mules. We produced a letter of credit for 
$50,000 on a Dallas bank. Those men laughed 
at it. There was a little bank in the town of 
Mason, and we took the letter of credit there; 
but the banker had only a thousand dollars or 
so in his safe and could let us have nothing. The 
only thing to do was to ride the hundred and 
twenty-five miles to San Antonio and get the 
cash. I took the stage. 

“In San Antonio Colonel Breckenridge, the 
big banker, advised me as to the best kind of 
money belt to buy and helped me pack $25,000 
worth of gold into it. The coins were ten and 
twenty dollar pieces. When the money was all 
packed away, the belt weighed one hundred and 
four pounds. I weighed about a hundred and 
forty. 

“Then I went to a store that sold second-hand 
goods and dickered for the floppiest hat and the 
most run-down pair of boots I could find. At 
one of the horse pens I picked out a pony that 
looked like something the rats had chewed on but 
that was tough and wiry. I paid $15 for him 
and $5 for an old shell of a saddle. Towards 
128 


Rides and Riders 


sundown I set out. My route was across the open 
range west of the stage road. If I met anybody, 
I was to pass as a greenhorn looking for a 

job. 

“I was expected back in Mason with the cash, 
and I did not care to meet some of the men ex¬ 
pecting me—not until I had got rid of my load. 
The rough Llano country was at that time the 
hiding-out place of about the toughest set of out¬ 
laws Texas ever had. 

“The first night out I rode about fifty miles. 
At daylight I watered my horse and staked him 
in a little opening surrounded by brush. Then 
I crawled into a thicket. If the horse was lo¬ 
cated by outlaws, I and my money belt would 
still be to capture. Of course, I had a six- 
shooter. At dark I saddled up again and rode 
on north. About every fifteen miles I’d unsaddle 
and let my pony graze for a while. When I got 
close to Mason, instead of going straight in, I 
made a big circle and came in from the side oppo¬ 
site to that on which I was being expected. I 
learned later that some well-armed men had 
looked the San Antonio stage over just before 
it reached Mason. 

“After we paid the cash for our steers, the 
Mason banker refused to take it on deposit for 
the ranchmen. No sir, he did not want any gold 
in his bank. The owners had to take it back to 
129 


On the Open Range 


San Antonio. Nobody in the country wanted it 
known that he had money about his house. We 
trailed our cattle on up as far as Red River, and 
there we sold out at $28 around. After all, the 
ride was not a hard one, and I have always con¬ 
sidered it well paid for.” 

In a Wyoming Blizzard 

No tale of the spur ever told is more heroic 
than that of the race of “Portuguese” Phillips 
against torture and death in the killing cold of a 
Wyoming blizzard. 

Late December of the terrible winter of 1866 
found a little band of American troops isolated 
at Fort Phil Kearney, Wyoming. There were 
one hundred and nineteen men, and there were 
women and children. A few miles from the fort 
Red Cloud at the head of three thousand Sioux 
warriors had just destroyed to the last man a de¬ 
tachment of eighty-one soldiers. The victorious 
warriors now encircled the fort. Destruction 
seemed certain unless help could be secured. The 
nearest help was at Fort Laramie, two hundred 
and thirty-six miles away down the bleak and 
empty Bozeman Trail. 

It was the night of December 21. The ther¬ 
mometer stood thirty degrees below zero. The 
cold was so intense that the sentries had to be re- 
130 


Rides and Riders 


lieved every fifteen minutes. Every hour men 
shoveled the drifting snow back from the walls 
of the stockade so that it would not bank up and 
form a bridge for the Sioux warriors to cross on. 
Finally the commanding officer in desperation 
called for a volunteer to go for aid. 

Portuguese Phillips answered the call. He 
had been a trapper with the Hudson Bay Com¬ 
pany. He knew the country like a coyote. He 
had lived for years among the Sioux and had 
married one of them. He was now post in¬ 
terpreter; it is said that he was also employed 
as scout and hunter. Most of the details about 
him that have come down are uncertain. It is 
certain that he filled his pockets with dried meat 
and hard-tack, tied a bag of grain on his horse, 
and about midnight began his perilous journey. 

He fully realized that he must take the utmost 
care in order to get through the Indian lines. 
Red Cloud would be looking for a messenger to 
go out. Phillips’ plan was to crawl, leading his 
horse, until he should get past the danger of de¬ 
tection. He had a lariat sixty feet long. His 
horse was pure white, selected on account of his 
color as well as mettle, for a white horse against 
white snow is hard to see—especially at night. A 
horse carrying an empty saddle is likely to shake 
himself, making considerable noise; to avoid the 
risk of betrayal by such a noise, Phillips led his 
131 


On the Open Range 


horse forth without saddle. He would make the 
ride bareback. 

For hours he crawled, paused, listened, felt his 
way, led his horse. Then he mounted and struck 
for Fort Laramie. He knew that the Indians 
were waylaying the trail; so he avoided it, pick¬ 
ing his own route, sometimes miles off the beaten 
road. The snow on the ground was from three 
to five feet deep; the blizzard blowing down from 
the Big Horn Mountains never laid. Each 
morning at daybreak he took cover in brush; his 
only chance was to travel in darkness. At dawn 
of Christmas Day, after four nights of riding* 
he reached Horseshoe Station, forty miles still 
from Fort Laramie and a hundred and ninety- 
six miles from the fort he had left. There he 
telegraphed. But he did not trust the telegraph, 
and as soon as darkness fell he rode on. 

It was well that he did not trust the telegraph. 
The line had either been cut or put out of order 
by the blizzard. At eleven o’clock that night the 
giant figure of Portuguese Phillips entered 
“Bedlam.” Bedlam was the officers’ club house at 
Fort Laramie, and when the exhausted messen¬ 
ger came through the door, a gay Christmas ball 
was in full swing. His hands, knees, and feet 
were frozen, although he was swathed from head 
to foot in buffalo skin. He was shaggy with 
snow. His beard trailed icicles. He gasped out 
132 


Rides and Riders 


that he was a courier with a desperate dispatch. 
Then he reeled and fell upon the floor. 

The besieged folk at Fort Phil Kearney were 
saved. 

Portuguese Phillips was just one of the riders 
who won the West. The story of his ride is just 
a detail in a riding tradition that neither auto¬ 
mobile nor airplane can ever entirely run away 
from. 

The Spaniard without a Head 

Where so many real horsemen have galloped 
into everyday tradition, it is natural that here 
and there a spectre rider should be in the saddle 
also. The Spaniard whose skull would not fit his 
skeleton was an extraordinary rider. 

The winter before the territory belonging to 
the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians in western 
Oklahoma was opened for settlement (1892), 
Uncle Billie Morse trapped along its lower 
boundary. This boundary was marked by the 
North Fork of Red River. 

One day he discovered a well-worn runway for 
coons and, following it, came to the mouth of a 
cave. He did not explore it, but outside he 
noticed some dried watermelon vines and won¬ 
dered how they had volunteered to grow in such 
a remote place. He set his traps and then after 
133 


On the Open Range 


he had stretched a bale o? coon pelts, moved on. 
The name he gave the place, Coon Cave, still 
holds. 

One spring day several years later some newly 
arrived settlers along the river country were 
chasing a coyote when it ran into Coon Cave. 
They determined to get it and sent two boys to 
the nearest farm house to borrow a lantern, a 
ball of binding twine, and a grubbing hoe. While 
the men waited for these things, they noticed 
several watermelon vines growing about the cave 
as thriftily as if they had been cultivated. The 
boys returned and the whole party entered. The 
cave was “as dry as a bone yard” and evidently 
never leaked water. In places the men had to 
crawl. Fifty feet back they found something 
that made them forget all about coyotes. 

It was the skeleton of a man. Close at hand 
was the hull of an old saddle. Coyotes had 
chewed the leather off. One of the men kicked 
a brass bit out of the dirt; it was of the Spanish 
jaw-breaking style. Beside the skeleton lay an 
ancient flint-lock rifle, and in the rust along the 
barrel were the plain prints of 'watermelon seeds. 
An old time buffalo skinner, the man that first 
called attention to the watermelon seeds, said 
that the flint-lock and saddle were both of Span¬ 
ish make. On a rock ledge over the skeleton were 
a pair of bullet moulds, some lead, a powder 
134 


Rides and Riders 

horn, and a gourd such as was used in early days 
for a canteen. 

But the skeleton was not an ordinary skeleton. 
It was of a man fully seven feet tall and was 
headless. In a niche twenty feet away a skull 
hardly bigger than a man’s fist was found. Be¬ 
yond all doubt it was a human skull. Could it 
possibly belong to the giant skeleton? The bones 
of a dead man are always a mystery. 

The coyote hunters gathered up everything 
they could find, and that very day they took the 
relics to the nearest store in the country, seven 
or eight miles distant. Here the good people 
from up and down the North Fork gathered to 
see and discuss them, and “the Coon Cave Skele¬ 
ton” became the talk of the country. 

All the wise men agreed that the bones were 
of some early Spanish explorer who had got cut 
off from his party and had taken refuge in the 
cave from Indians. Some of them were of the 
opinion that he had been wounded near the en¬ 
trance and, dragging his saddle equipment after 
him, had crawled back to die. According to 
others, he liked the cave so well after he took 
refuge in it that he continued living in it as a 
hermit and there died a natural death. Bits of 
dark hair picked up near the skull seemed to 
show that it had not been scalped. But Uncle 
Billie Morse, who drifted back into his old trap- 
135 


On the Open Range 


ping grounds just when argument was hottest, 
declared that the hair was from a polecat. 

Whoever or whatever the skeleton had been, 
one thing was certain: the man that left his bones 
in Coon Cave was carrying watermelon seed with 
him. Maybe, suggested one settler, he was going 
to plant watermelons over the country as Johnny 
Appleseed planted apples over Arkansas, Ohio, 
and other states. ' 

But nobody had a theory to explain the pigmy 
skull for the giant skeleton. The storekeeper 
and some other leading citizens talked of having 
a university professor—one that knew “all about 
bones”—come out and clear up the mystery. 

Then one night skeleton, saddle, rifle, and 
bridle bit all disappeared. The skull was left in 
the store. 

The next day a man named Oxworth, who 
lived about ten miles away, went to the store for 
supplies. He left his young wife at home alone. 
As lie drove back that afternoon he thought about 
the news of the skeleton he would have to tell 
her. When he arrived, he found that she had 
something to tell him. 

Her story was that about noon a strange man 
dressed in ancient Spanish costume had ridden up 
to the front gate of their yard, had stopped, 
raised his hands up and down in a weary way, 
and then circled the house four times, riding very, 
136 


Rides and Rideiis 


very slowly. He was on a coal black horse. 
Swung to his saddle was a long old-fashioned rifle 
—and he had no head. Finally, instead of riding 
away, “he just dimmed out of sight like a morn¬ 
ing fog.” 

The next day about dusk a woman several 
miles distant saw the same headless rider in an¬ 
cient Spanish costume approach her house. He 
was on the same coal black horse, and, although 
he came up slowly, he appeared to have been 
riding very hard, for the woman could plainly 
hear the horse blowing. She sAw red in the 
horse’s nostrils and white sweat-froth on his neck 
and flank. His mouth was blood-flecked “as if 
it had been jerked and cut with a Spanish bit.” 
Nothing could have been more real than horse 
and rider—only the man had no head. “They 
did not exactly go away but just faded out.” 
The woman was alone when she saw the strange 
horseman; her husband had gone off to buy a 
milk cow, and her three children were down in a 
little swale back of the house driving up a turkey 
hen with a young brood. 

Before the week was over, the mysterious rider 
had been seen four times, in each instance by a 
lone woman. The last of the four women who 
saw him declared that he carried across the front 
of his saddle a large Alabama Sweet watermelon, 
and that he lifted it up and down slowly and 
137 





The headless Spaniard continued to appear in widely separated 
places. 


138 






















































Rides and Riders 


wearily “just as Mrs. Oxworth saw him lifting 
his hands up and down.” 

A few weeks went by and the headless Span¬ 
iard continued to appear in widely separated 
places. Women refused to stay alone, and the 
whole affair was becoming more troublesome than 
interesting. But nobody knew how to “lay the 
ghost.” 

Then the storekeeper suggested that if Coon 
Cave were further explored something might he 
learned that would help matters out. Coon Cave, 
however, was strongly suspected of being head¬ 
quarters for the “Spanish ghost,” and nobody in 
the country wanted to explore it. A purse of 
nine dollars was made up for any man who would 
make a thorough investigation of the cave. 

At this juncture a cowboy from the Texas 
Panhandle came along. When he heard of the 
nine dollars, he said, “Just give me time to pull 
off my spurs and I’m ready to crawl in.” An 
hour was appointed; the storekeeper closed shop; 
and people for miles around gathered at the 
mouth of the cave to see what they might see. 
One thing they noticed at once was that several 
watermelons were on the vines in front of the 
cave and that fresh seed were scattered on the 
floor at the entrance. 

The cowboy was equipped with a six-shooter, a 
belt knife, and a bull’s-eye lantern. It was five 
139 


On the Open Range 


o’clock in the afternoon when he entered Coon 
Cave. He has never been seen or heard of since. 
The day after he disappeared a strong posse of 
men explored the cave as far back as they dared 
go in search of him, but they did not get to the 
end of the dark tunnel. At the same time the 
headless Spaniard suddenly ceased to ride over 
the country; for thirty years he has not appeared 
to woman or man. 

In western Oklahoma, however, the story of 
the giant skeleton and the phantom rider is still 
fresh. The little skull has been lost; but here 
and there is a watermelon patch that, according 
to the owner’s claim, has descended from the 
vines that grew wild and bore at the entrance of 
Coon Cave. Those watermelons are as good as 
the apples that come from trees planted by 
Johnny Appleseed. 

Greatest or All the Comanches 

Stories of fearful leaps on horseback are al¬ 
most as old as civilization. One of the bravest 
traditions of Rome is of the leap made by Cur- 
tius. A great chasm had opened near the Forum, 
threatening the life of the city. The augurs pre¬ 
dicted that it would not be closed until Rome 
had cast into it her most precious treasure. At 
this, Curtius declared the most precious thing 
140 


Rides and Riders 


Rome possessed was her brave men. Then arm¬ 
ing himself and mounting his war steed, he leaped 
into the gorge. 

As might be expected, the hardest riding coun¬ 
try the world had ever known, the West and the 
Southwest, has contributed also its tales of des¬ 
perate leaps. More than one cowboy trying to 
turn a herd of stampeded cattle in the pitchy 
blackness of a midnight storm rode off a canyon 
bluff to his death—and to become the hero of 
camp fire stories. In the phrase of the old days “to 
ride like a Comanche” was to ride with all the reck¬ 
lessness and skill that a horseman could exhibit. 

Medicine Bluff is a long, high, crescent-shaped 
bluff overlooking Medicine Creek in the Wichita 
Mountains of Oklahoma. Near one end of the 
crescent a winding trail leads from the creek to 
the heights. Long before the white man came, 
the bluff was sacred to the Comanche people, for 
there the Great Spirit sometimes dwelt and there 
the medicine men resorted to drive out evil spirits. 
There the sick were often taken, either to be 
healed or else to be transported bodily to the 
Happy Hunting Grounds. A cairn of stones 
six feet high marked the summit. Young war¬ 
riors about to take the warpath climbed the bluff 
and presented their shields against the rising sun 
to make them invulnerable. Once a warrior worn 
out with years tottered up the bluff to die; three 
141 


On the Open Range 


clays later he came running into camp—a young 
man, strong and fresh and eager. 

Such are the accounts of Medicine Bluff pre¬ 
served yet by the Comanches. And one of them, 
so old that he claimed to be “brother to the loft¬ 
iest peak of the Wichita range,” told to pioneers 
this tale. 

Many, many grasses ago the Comanches were a 
great people. Their warriors were as many as 
the buffaloes of the plains and they were cunning 
like the wolf. They had herds and herds of 
ponies and their villages were by many waters. 
They were a brave nation and all the other tribes 
feared them. 

But two of the Comanches were braver than 
all the others. One of them was ripe with years 
and had long been the unquestioned leader of his 
people; the other was a younger man ambitious to 
overthrow his elder. In games on horseback, in 
hunting the buffalo and the antelope, in captur¬ 
ing the eagle and the mustang, in trailing the 
enemy and taking his scalp—in all activities the 
two chiefs were coming to be silently pitted 
against each other. The lesser chiefs looked up 
to them both and all warriors obeyed them. 

One day these two leaders and their braves 
were returning from a raid against distant ene¬ 
mies. They had many scalps and ponies and no 
one of their number had been left behind. When 
142 


Rides and Riders 


they made camp in the green valley of Medicine 
Bluff Creek under the great bluff, they had much 
to be thankful for. While they ate buffalo meat 
and rested, the younger of the two leading chiefs 
fixed his gaze on the heights. For a long time 
he seemed rapt in meditation. Then suddenly 
he drew himself up in proud gesture and, turning 
to the braves lounging on the grass, said: 

“I am the great warrior of the Comanches. 
No other warrior equals me. I am like the moun¬ 
tain. My deeds tower above yours as the moun¬ 
tain towers above the valley. Where is the Co¬ 
manche that dares follow me?” As he spoke, he 
lifted high in one hand his shield and in the other 
his spear. 

Every warrior was now erect. Immediately 
their old leader, who had been so affronted, 
stepped forth. 

“If you are the great warrior of the Coman¬ 
ches,” he rumbled, striking his own breast with 
heavy blows, “then you are the buffalo that leads 
the herd and I am the shrunken old bull driven 
away to die and feed the wolf. You ask me to 
follow you! I will follow no man! But I will 
go with you! And after you have stopped I will 
go on!” 

Then, without saying a word, the chieftains put 
on their war paint and war bonnets, hung their 
trophies of past victories about their belts, 
mounted their battle horses, and rode away. 

143 


On the Open Range 


Side by side across Medicine Bluff Creek they 
rode, then threaded up the trail that led to the 
sacred summit. When they had reached it, the 
younger warrior drew rein, his rival halting also. 
The tribesmen below could see and hear. The 
words of the young chieftain bounded down to 
them. 

“You have come with me so far,” he said to 
the veteran by his side. “Follow me now!” 

With these words he shouted the war whoop of 
triumph, dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and 
dashed straight for the precipice hardly fifty 
yards away. 

The older warrior fairly lifted his steed from 
the ground and, with a yell that drowned the 
echoes of the first, lunged beside his swiftly run¬ 
ning antagonist. 

In a minute the edge of the whirling precipice 
was reached. Then the younger man jerked his 
horse upon his haunches. The other saw the 
treachery or the cowardice, whichever it was. 
With a ringing cry that was both taunt and boast 
he swept on into space. The warriors far below 
saw their great leader leap. They heard his 
awful shout. It was: “Greatest of all the Co- 
manches!” Down, down, through the hundreds 
of feet of fearful void he sat upright on his horse 
as calm as if in council. Then for throbbing 
seconds after man and horse had crushed against 
the rocks, the great cry he had cried reverberated 
144 


Rides and Riders 

down the canyon—“Greatest of all the Coman- 
ehes!” 

The warriors buried man and horse together, 
performing their most solemn rites. All night 
long they chanted their songs of mourning. 
After riding on to the camp where their families 
awaited them, they spent da} r s reciting the deeds 
of “the greatest of all the Comanches.” As for 
the younger chief, he became a despised outcast. 
No lodge of all the Comanche villages would re¬ 
ceive him. No man would speak his name. 

And “the greatest of all the Comanches” is 
greatest too of all the riders whose names legend 
has coupled with the horse-tracked bluffs of the 
Southwest. 



145 







Chapter VIII 


THE KANSAS KID: “A COWBOY 
. FOR TO BE” 

“Sam Bass was born in Indiana; that was his native 
home, 

And at the age of seventeen young Sam began to 
roam. 

He first came out to Texas, a cowboy for to be; 

A kinder hearted fellow you seldom ever see.” 

What followed with young Sam Bass does not 
matter here. The story of his going a-roaming 
has been the story of life-loving boys since civili¬ 
zation dawned in the East. Two thousand years 
ago the lads of Rome who wanted adventure ran 
off to join Julius Caesar’s army against the 
Gauls. In the great days of Queen Elizabeth, 
English lads were running away to sail the Span¬ 
ish seas with Sir Francis Drake or to join Sir 
Walter Raleigh in looking for a fabled city of 
gold called Manoa. 

In 1723 a youngster named Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin ran away from Boston to try his luck in a 
town of the western frontier—Philadelphia. The 
frontier had reached the Pacific Ocean when 
140 


The Kansas Kid 


Horace Greeley gave his famous advice: “Go 
west, young man, go west.” That advice to 
American boys was an echo of the past as well 
as a prophecy, for from the days of Franklin to 
those of Roosevelt there was not a time in Amer¬ 
ica when boys did not want to go west. And they 
still want to go west. 

The great days of the run-away adventurers 
were from about the end of the Civil War to the 
close of the century. During that period a third 
of the territory of the United States was being 
opened to the white man, and every boy wanted 
to be a cowboy or an Indian scout. 

“The Kansas Kid” belonged to that period. 
The Kid’s real name was Carl Ross. Along in 
the eighties he was living in a little town in east¬ 
ern Kansas. His parents were good people. 
His father kept a store; his mother often read 
to him and took him on Sundays to church. He 
had a brother and sister, both younger than he. 
The family had drifted down from Nebraska two 
years before. Before that they had lived in Mis¬ 
souri. The air was full of rumors of homesteads 
to be filed on in Oklahoma, and now the Ross 
family expected to “drift” again when the gov¬ 
ernment should open that territory to settlers. 
Carl was fifteen years old. He had been to school 
enough to “read, write, and cipher.” 

Eastern Kansas was no longer the end of the 
147 


On the Open Range 


cattle trail from Texas, but to the west cattle 
were still being trailed and there were great 
ranches. The glamour of the trail days yet 
lingered in the talk of old settlers. It lingered 
more in the pages of paper-backed novels, some 
of them highly illustrated. And an illustrated 
one it was that fell into the hands of Carl. It had 
pictures of a prairie round-up with cowboys on 
pitching horses, of a stage hold-up, and of a 
battle with the Indians. Then Carl determined 
to go west and become a cowboy. 

The only difficulty was in leaving his mother. 
He loved her and she had always trusted him. It 
would be easier for her, he thought, if he left in 
the open. So he told her that he wanted to go 
hack to Missouri to see his grandparents. Spring 
had come, school was out, and his mother said 
that, as he had always been a good and truthful 
boy, she was willing for him to go. The very 
next day he started to the depot with his little 
trunk. 

“Why, it’s not time for the train going east,” 
said his mother. 

“There’s been a washout and I’ll have to take 
another train,” Carl explained. 

His mother looked at him in a peculiar way 
and said nothing. He thought of that look many 
times afterwards. 

He bought his ticket to a station near the 
148 


The Kansas Kid 


Colorado line. He had never heard of it before. 
He guessed that it was beyond the land of farms. 

When the train stopped at the station, he found 
himself on the bald prairie. The only house was 
the little depot; the only inhabitant was the sta¬ 
tion agent, who lived where he worked. A short 
way down the track were some shipping pens. 
Carl looked over the prairies; he looked at his 
little trunk. 

“I guess you won’t run off,” he said, addressing 
it. “Til come back and get you when I locate 
a ranch.” 

Then he walked up to the agent. “Any good 
ranches around here?” he asked. 

“There’s one about four miles north of here,” 
the agent replied, with a grin. 

The boy struck out. He wore a derby hat 
common to those times and low-quartered shoes. 
When he had walked a mile or so, he met a man 
on horseback. 

“Where’s a good ranch?” he asked him. 

The man grinned and told him to keep on 
going. 

After a while he came to some shacks and cor¬ 
rals. Out in front of one of the shacks a half 
dozen cowboys were squatted around a red 
blanket playing poker. They looked up and 
went on playing as if they had not seen him. 

“Where’s the proprietor?” he demanded. 

149 


On the Open Range 

“Proprietor? What’s that?” one of them 
jeered. “Does it wear horns or is it a muley?” 

“Don’t tease the kid, Pete,” put in another 
cowboy. “You know we ain’t got anything but 
steers on this ranch, and what he wants is some 
milk. His mama ought to have filled his bottle 
up before she let him untie the apron strings.” 

Carl was hot and the perspiration was rolling 
down his face. Such talk did not cool him off. 

“Now I’d be a-shamed to make fun of a little 
boy like that,” put in a third cowboy. “Look at 
him. The tears is actually rolling out of his 
ears.” 

Thus the bantering went on. The boy flared 
up and tried to answer back, but everything he 
said was turned into ridicule. He drew out a 
rusty “frog-sticker” as if he were going to stab 
somebody. Just at this point a quiet man who 
had said nothing took a hand. 

This quiet man was much older than the others. 
His hair was grizzled, and he wore a stubby gray 
beard. The men called him Bill. His voice was 
a soft drawl. 

“Come over here, kid,” he said, stepping out to 
one side. “I want to talk to you.” 

Something in the way of the man drew the boy 
to him and quieted him. 

“I know your kind,” the man called Bill said. 
“I ran away from my home in Tennessee when I 
150 



He walked up to the agent. “Any good ranches around herer” 

he asked. 


151 

































On the Open Range 


was a boy myself. You ought to go back home, 
is what you ought to do. This is no country for 
a boy to grow up in. But I know it’s no use to 
talk to you about going back. Your head’s 
turned the other way and you’re set on being a 
cowboy. Well, if you want to get along, you’ve 
got to learn to take a little teasing. I’ll show 
you to the boss, and if you keep your tem¬ 
per and hold your tongue, maybe he’ll give you 
a job.” 

The only job turned out to be in the cook¬ 
house. That was a poor place for a cowboy, Carl 
thought, but it was that or nothing. So he took 
the job, and at once his name was “the Kansas 
Kid.” His one ambition now was to cast off the 
derby and low-quarters and to swagger forth in 
boots and wide-brimmed hat. Before a week was 
out he got boots and hat through one of the men 
who was sent to town for a wagon load of sup¬ 
plies. He had to mortgage two months’ wages 
to pay for them. 

As time went on, old Bill became more and 
more the adviser and protector of the young 
ranch hand. But the Kid’s real understanding of 
the code of the cow people came one day when 
a puncher named Sam failed to appear for sup¬ 
per. All other hands were present. 

“Where’s Sam?” asked the Kid. 

Nobody paid any attention to the question. 

152 


The Kansas Kid 


“Why doesn’t Sam come in to supper?” in¬ 
sisted the Kid. 

Still there was no reply. 

“What’s the matter that Sam’s not here?” the 
Kid repeated. 

“Here, Kid,” said old Bill as he arose from 
the table. “Come outside.” 

When they were alone, Bill said: “Don’t ask 
any more about where Sam is. Maybe he killed 
a man. Maybe a man killed him. We don’t 
know where Sam is. Understand? It is none of 
our business. It is none of your business. Quit 
talking ’round like it was. You’ve got to learn 
to hold your mouth shut in this country and tend 
to your own affairs. Just keep on talking about 
Sam, and you’ll get into trouble.” 

Not long after this the Kid had his first lesson 
in riding. The cowboys roped an old “stew ball 
black,” as a range song goes, 

“With two big set-fasts on his back.” 


He was a “hard looker,” indeed, and the Kid 
considered him a spiritless creature to carry such 
a lively fellow as himself. But the cowboys 
brought out a dilapidated saddle, used some 
gunny sacks for a blanket, and cinched the saddle 
on. The next stanza of that old song tells the 
story well enough. 


153 


On the Open Range 


“When I got up he left the ground, 

Went up in the air and turned around, 

And I shot on like a cannon ball 
Till the earth got in my way.” 

But unlike the tenderfoot hero of the song, the 
Kansas Kid was not “carried in” and massaged 
down “with a rolling pin.” Instead, he got up 
and mounted the horse again. He rode him sev¬ 
eral jumps this time before he was pitched off. 
A third time he mounted, and now some of the 
cowboys were bragging on him. One of them 
rode alongside and held up the old outlaw’s head. 

“Why, look at the Kid’s wrist!” he exclaimed. 
“He must have sprained it. It’s all swelled up.” 

“He’s showed himself game all right,” ad¬ 
mitted another cowboy. “I guess he can get off 
now.” 

Summer passed and then came the time for the 
“fall work.” It was old Bill who persuaded the 
boss to let the Kansas Kid join in the round-up. 

Here was the dream of his life. Down in a 
valley were thousands of cattle, and stringing in 
from the hills were thousands of others. They 
came in running and trotting. There were cow¬ 
boys by the dozens from ranches ten, twenty, 
fifty miles away. There were shouts and 
snatches of song from happy cowpunchers and 
poppings of the long cow-whips. There were 
bellowing and lowing and bleating. The dust 
154 


The Kansas Kid 


was in clouds. On the green margin of a stream 
that threaded through the valley, near the chuck 
wagons, men were roping their “cutting horses” 
out of immense remudas. Branding fires were 
ablaze on two sides of the herd. Here was the 
life, the movement, the adventure the Kansas Kid 
had run away to find. 

Some time after the big round-up, when work 
grew lighter again, the boss got drunk one day. 
He ordered the Kansas Kid to go bring in his 
horse from a small pasture. The Kid did his 
best, but the boss’s horse was “feeling his oats” 
and tore back and forth like a mustang. The 
Kid ran him for an hour; then he reported to the 
boss that he could not pen the animal. 

“This is a fine come-off,” blurted out the boss. 
“Here I’ve trained you up and you think you’re 
too good to drive in my saddle horse. Go get 
him, I say, or I’ll fire you in a minute.” 

The Kid went out again and for another hour 
he tried to pen the boss’s sorrel. It was a foolish 
thing for him to go back once more to the boss 
with his tale of failure, but he went. This time 
he asked for help. 

“Help!” roared the boss, and his thick tongue 
and bleary eyes did not sweeten his words. 
“Help! It’s come to a fine pass when I’m pay¬ 
ing wages to a cowboy that can’t even pen a 
gentle saddle horse. Next, you’ll want a nigger 
1 55 


On the Open Range 


to black your boots and stir cream in your coffee, 
I guess. Help! you say. You’re fired. Now 
pull your freight or I’ll help your soul to an¬ 
other world!” 

While the tirade was going on, old Bill entered. 
His manner was slow as usual. 

“Now, now,” he broke in with a kind of sorrow 
in his voice, “you’re just drunk, Jim, but you 
have no right to abuse a boy like that.” 

The boss started up towards old Bill. Then 
Bill drew his six-shooter and hit the drunken man 
over the head. 

“Well, Kid,” he drawled, as he put the six- 
shooter back in its holster, “we’ve got to leave 
now. I don’t want to kill or get killed, and if 
we stay here something like that’ll have to hap¬ 
pen.” 

The two struck south across “No Man’s Land” 
into the Texas Panhandle. They worked a 
month for an outfit that was “shaping up” its 
herd for the winter. Then fall work was over, 
and they rode west for a ranch in New Mexico 
that Bill had once worked on. There they got 
a job breaking horses at five dollars per head. 

But before they had worked very long, a bad 
horse reared and fell back with old Bill, wrench¬ 
ing his hip. Bill was not so active as he had once 
been, but he was just as game. He mounted the 
horse again, and again the horse fell back, this 
156 


The Kansas Kid 


time in such a way that the saddle horn with all 
the weight of the wild horse on top of it bored 
down into the rider’s lung. 

After he came to consciousness and stopped 
spitting up blood, he spoke: “Kid, I can’t ride 
any more horses, I guess. You can’t stay here 
any longer with me, either. I’ll be all right. 
These are my friends. They’ll feed me as long 
as I can eat. You go on and get you a job doing 
something else.” 

The Kid rode west and north. It was the sea¬ 
son when ranches laid off cowboys instead of 
hiring them. The Kid was still far from being 
a seasoned cowboy. He thought of returning to 
his Kansas home. He wondered how his little 
sister and his little brother were growing and how 
his mother was. But they all seemed far away 
and in a dream. He got a job herding sheep. 
The range was in Colorado, just above the New 
Mexico line. 

There were three thousand of the sheep, and 
the camp was in a canyon. Across the mouth of 
the canyon was a brush fence, and above the fence 
was a water hole. By the water hole was a shelv¬ 
ing rock, and under the rock the Kansas Kid had 
a tent, in which he kept his bedding and a box 
of provisions. Usually he slept on a pallet out 
under the stars. He had a horse, which he kept 
picketed or hobbled, and he had a young dog that 
157 


On the Open Range 


was learning to herd sheep. It was a day’s ride 
to ranch headquarters and another day’s ride 
back. His orders were to kill a sheep for meat 
whenever he wanted it, and to saddle his horse 
and ride to a store twenty miles away when he 
needed sugar, coffee, meal, lard, salt, bacon and 
frijoles (or beans). 

For miles and miles away on every side it was 
a stark sheep country with nobody in it but other 
solitary shepherds and their bleating sheep. The 
days went by without count or name. There was 
no Sunday or Monday or any other day. There 
were no voices but the voices of the sheep and of 
the coyotes on the hills. Every morning the Kid 
turned his sheep out and herded them. Every 
evening he penned them. Three times every 
night he arose and walked around them to make 
sure that the wolves had not entered. The dog 
always went with him. After a while the dog 
became so well trained that he made the rounds 
alone. 

The nameless days and the nameless months 
went on, and a terrible fear began to grow on the 
Kid. The fear was that he should forget how to 
talk in human language! He would talk to the 
dog, but the dog was always silent and sometimes 
did not even wag his tail. He would talk to the 
sheep, but they would only chew their cuds and 
baa , baa } baa . 


158 


The Kansas Kid 


Then he did a desperate thing, a dramatic 
thing, a thing that only a human being penned 
away in solitude could have done. He found 
some red clay—Indians perhaps had painted with 
clay from this very bank—and on the white rock 
that rose up behind his tent he drew the picture 
of a man. It approached something human to 
talk to. The Kid addressed it, and then in the 
manner of little girls playing with dolls put 
words into its mouth. But only for a brief while 
did such a make-believe companion drive away 
the loneliness. He developed the habit of talk¬ 
ing to himself, but, talk or no talk, it takes two 
to make company. 

One day when it seemed that h could endure 
the solitude no longer, the Kid saddled his horse 
and rode to the store. He rode up to it in a run 
and, rushing within the door, called out to the sour 
old character who kept it, “Talk to me I Talk to 
me, I say! Speak some human words! I’ve got 
to hear a man’s voice.” 

“What’s the matter with you?” growled the 
store-keeper. “I ain’t here to entertain sheep 
herders. Tell me what you want and get out.” 

The Kid bought a supply of such groceries as 
were allowed and rode back to camp. He had to 
return the day he left, for the sheep were always 
left in the corral while the shepherd was gone. 

And now a feeling grew over the Kid that he 
159 


On the Open Range 


could not eat any more mutton. He grew to feel 
that he and the sheep belonged to the same animal 
species. He wanted meat but he could not bring 
himself to kill a sheep. One day he sat on a rock 
wishing that one of the herd would do something 
to make him angry so that he might kill it. He 
even chunked rocks at them, hoping to make one 
kick or butt. An old black ewe attracted his at¬ 
tention, and, drawing his knife, he vowed that he 
would cut her throat—which is the established 
way of killing a sheep or goat. The old ewe was 
near and she kept coming nearer. Presently she 
came up to him and smelled his hand and licked 
out her tongue in a friendly way. He could not 
kill the ewe. Thereafter he ate only bacon and 
beans. 

Time went on. He did not know how long he 
had been with the sheep, but according to the 
seasons he had been away from home nearly four 
years. Perhaps it was the springtime that called 
him to take stock of himself. 

“Plere I am,” he said aloud. “Why am I here? 
What is life worth out here anyhow? Why don’t 
I go back home? I wonder how big my little 
sister is and my little brother. And I wonder 
how my mother looks by now. I’ve got to see 
them.” 

Then he determined to go back to Kansas. He 
corralled his sheep and rode into ranch head¬ 
quarters. 


160 


The Kansas Kid 


“Now, it won’t do any good to argue with me,” 
he said to the boss. “I’m going to quit. I’ve 
already quit.” 

Two or three hands about the place made fun 
of him for wanting to go back home, for he was 
still just a boy—the Kansas Kid. But there was 
no changing his determination now. 

He took his pay, the boss sent another man to 
take charge of the sheep, and the Kid turned his 
horse’s head east. The first night out he slept 
under a hay stack. 

After he had slept and the next morning was 
saddling his horse, a change came over his feeling. 
After all, where was he going? His people were 
no longer in Kansas, he felt sure. Had they 
not talked about going to Oklahoma? But 
where in Oklahoma might they be? By now, so 
the Kansas Kid went on reasoning, his people had 
forgotten him and would not know him even if 
he found them. The Kid was still very young 
and did not know how long mothers and fathers 
remember. He decided that he had as well re¬ 
turn to the sheep ranch and to herding sheep. As 
he prepared to mount, he faced his horse hack 
towards the west. 

Now the Kid was riding with a headstall that 
was too long for his pony’s head, and in some 
way as the horse wheeled at being mounted, the 
bit slipped from his mouth and he struck out at 
a dead run. The direction he ran was not back 
161 


On the Open Range 


towards the sheep ranch—but south. He ran a 
mile before the Kid could stop him. 

‘‘Well,” he said, talking half to himself and 
half to his horse, “here I am a mile farther away 
from sheep. I suppose we had just as well keep 
going.” 

Then a new idea came into his head. He would 
try to find Bill, old Bill who had been so good 
to him. He kept riding. A week later he came 
to the ranch where he had left Bill “laid up” with 
a wrenched hip and a punctured lung. Bill was 
hobbling about. He would never ride another 
bucking bronco, but, as he said, he was “made 
out of rawhide” and would wear a long time yet. 

“I’ll tell you what, Kid,” said Bill. “In a few 
days now the United States government is going 
to open two million acres of land in Oklahoma to 
settlers. It has been surveyed and divided into 
small tracts. People are already gathering to 
stake out their claims. There will be a great 
rush to see who can get the choicest plots. I have 
ridden all over that country. I know a little 
valley beside a clear running creek where I want 
to settle down, farm, and lead a quiet life. You 
are too young to take up land, but come with me, 
and I’ll give you a half share in whatever I get.” 

It did not take Bill and the Kid long to pack 
a mule with bedding, provisions, a few cooking 
utensils, an ax, and their personal belongings. 

162 


The Kansas Kid 


When they reached the edge of the territory to 
be given away to settlers, they found soldiers 
guarding it to prevent people from entering be¬ 
fore the hour set for “the run.” This hour was 
noon, April 22, 1889. 

Long before the signal was given, people were 
lined up for miles and miles. Some were on 
horseback, some in wagons, some in carts, some 
on bicycles, a few afoot. One man was push¬ 
ing a wheelbarrow. Trains were to enter with 
other people, for there was a railroad across 
the territory. It is said that fifty thousand per¬ 
sons entered the race. The majority of them did 
not know where they were going; they just hoped 
to find a plot of land. Bill and the Kid knew 
where they were going. They went. 

After they had staked the plot of land and 
made camp so as to claim it against all other per¬ 
sons, the Kid said: “I believe I’ll ride down the 
creek and take a look at our neighbors.” 

The country was alive with people, some of 
them “holding down” their claims, many of them 
scurrying here and there trying to find land not 
occupied. The Kid saw two men fighting over 
which should have a certain plot. He avoided 
them and rode on. Presently he saw a prairie 
schooner unhitched under some elms. A man was 
staking the horses out. A woman was unpacking 
the wagon. Something in her movements brought 
163 


On the Open Range 


the thought of his mother to the Kid’s mind. He 
fell to wondering how big his brother and sister 
had grown. Then he saw a boy and girl running 
up to the wagon with a bucket of water from the 
creek. He felt homesick. Unconsciously he 
struck a gallop towards the group. As he neared 
them, his heart began pounding. 

“Why,” he shouted aloud, “it is my mother! 
And there are my sister and brother, and yonder 
is Dad!” 

Running his horse right to the wagon, he 
stopped him with a jerk, and jumped off. 

“Oh, it is my Carl, my Carl,” cried the woman 
as she ran forward from the place to which she 
had retreated from the rushing horse. 

Carl had come home. He was no longer the 
wandering Kansas Kid. That evening he rode 
over to invite Bill to eat supper with his own 
family. The settlers helped each other build 
cabins. They ploughed some land, and although 
they did not raise much but turnips the first year, 
they managed to live. They were making homes 
and they were happy. 

The story of Carl Ross is the story of many 
a boy who went west “a cowboy for to be,” and 
then came home to be “a common citizen.” He 
grew to be a useful man, but as long as he lives 
he will remember the time when he was the 
Kansas Kid. 


164 


Chapter IX 


THE LANGUAGE OF BRANDS 

A brand is a mark burned on live stock with a 
hot iron. It establishes the owner’s claim to his 
cattle and identifies them not only on their home 
range but on distant ranges to which they may 
stray or at markets where thieves sometimes offer 
them for sale. Every owner has his brand re¬ 
corded by a county clerk or by a state official in 
charge of live stock. 

Just when brands were introduced into the 
world it would be difficult to say. The claim has 
been made that Cortez, conqueror of Mexico, 
originated branding not only in America but in 
the world. He may have been the first man to 
brand live stock in America, but centuries before 
his time cattle and horses were branded in the 
Old World. At Thebes, so it is said, a tomb 2500 
years old has been uncovered bearing among 
other decorations the picture of a cow tied down 
and a man branding her. The tomb must have 
been of an Egyptian cattle king. Horses were 
branded in England as far back as the eighth 
century. During the colonial days they were 
branded in New England. 

165 


On the Open Range 


But nowhere have brands been so important to 
people or so interwoven with their lives as on the 
ranges of western America. A ranchwoman in 
the Texas Panhandle made a “friendship quilt” 
out of blocks on which were embroidered the 
brands of her neighbors, some of them living more 
than a hundred miles away. This quilt repre¬ 
sented much more than marks on cattle; it 
represented people and the way those people 
lived. A ranch boy often learns the language 
of brands earlier than he learns the language of 
books. 

When George Asa was a very small boy living 
on a big ranch near the Rio Grande, his father 
began one day to teach him the letters of the 
alphabet, drawing them on paper with a pencil. 
He drew A, and George Asa learned it; then B, 
and George Asa learned it. But when he drew a 
C and called it, George Asa refused to accept it 
as a letter. 

“Aw, Daddy,” he exclaimed, “you’re trying to 
tease me now! That’s not a letter at all. That’s 
Mr. Cox’s brand.” 

Mr. Cox was a neighboring ranchman whose 
brand, a big C, was familiar to George Asa be¬ 
fore he knew one letter from another. As a ranch 
boy he was learning to read brands before he 
learned his A B C’s. 

At a one-teacher school out in the mesquite. 

1G6 


The Language of Brands 


the Friday afternoon session usually closed with 
recitations. One Friday a little girl recited: 


Twinkle, twinkle, little star! 
How I wonder what you are, 
Up above the world so high 
Like a diamond in the sky. 


One of the boys listening to the recitation was 
the son of a rancher who ran the “Diamond P” 



brand, 


That was the only diamond the 


lad knew, and he confesses now that he used to 
study the stars by the hour trying ^to catch one 
of them assuming the diamond shape so familiar 
to him on the sides of cows and at the hot end of 
a branding iron. He knew more about brands 
than about jewels and poetry. 

The brand gives its name to everything on the 
ranch. The chuck wagon of the Olmos (Elms) 
Ranch is seldom called the Olmos wagon, but is 

referred to as the “A Dot wagon,” being 

the ranch brand. The “cow crowd” working on 
the Withers range is customarily referred to, not 
as the Withers outfit, but as the “Pig Pen outfit,” 


the Pig Pen, made thus, 



167 


On the Open Range 


Withers brand. A cowboy rides a “Double Cir¬ 


cle horse,’’ which is branded 


Another 


cowboy is “one of the Rocking Chair hands” be¬ 
cause he works on the Rocking Chair, 

Ranch. 

A ranch may be named for its owner, as the 
Kokernot Ranch;*it may be named after a creek 
that runs through it, as the San Francisco Ranch; 
it may take its name from some other feature of 
nature, as the Seven Oaks Ranch. Rut a very 
large number of ranches take their names simply 



from the ranch brand; as, the J A Ranch, 

the Pitchfork Ranch, ; and the Hundred 

and One Ranch, lot . Not infrequently a 

town is given the name of the ranch it is estab¬ 
lished upon, as Spur, which is named for the 


brand 




of the Spur Ranch. Sometimes after 


a brand is no longer in use, some feature of the 
land keeps its name; although the great 7 D out- 
168 


The Language of Brands 


fit has quitted the Pecos forever, 7 D Mountain 
keeps the brand as a part of the language of the 
country. 

A cowman may become better known by his 
brand than by his own name. There is “Diamond 
and a Half Hud” of the plains, who signs his 


checks as W. D. Hudson and gives 



as his 


brand. Colonel B. H. Campbell, a prominent 
cowman of the Indian Territory, gave for his 


brand 



It was read as “Barbeque” (Bar 


B Q), and “Barbeque” Campbell became known 
where B. H. Campbell had never been heard of. 

Walter Billingsley, an old trail driver, tells a 
good story about how he used a ranch brand to 
identify himself. 

“In 1884,” he says, “I took a herd of King 
Ranch steers from South Texas to Cheyenne, 
Wyoming. Everything went all right until we 
reached Sidney, Nebraska. While we held the 
herd a few miles out from town, I let a bunch of 
the boys go in to see the sights. Five of them 
stayed out and did not report for work next 
morning. I rode in, found them, and fired them 
on the spot. I owed them $120 apiece. I had no 
169 


On the Open Range 


money to pay them off, and I did not know a soul 
in Sidney. 

“My first move was to see the banker. I ex¬ 
plained to him that I was trail boss for the fa¬ 
mous King Ranch and that I had fired five men 
to whom I owed $600. Then I asked him to cash 
a check for that amount. 

“ ‘Well/ the banker said, ‘you look all right 
and I am satisfied that you are all right, but can’t 
you get somebody to identify you?’ 

“ ‘I’m where I never was before and where I 
never expect to be again,’ I replied. ‘I don’t see 
a soul in town that I know.’ 

“The banker seemed anxious to accommodate 
me. ‘Suppose you look around a little and see 
if you can’t strike somebody you know,’ he con¬ 
cluded, ‘and then come back.’ 

“I went out. I had a plan. I rounded up the 
men I had fired and said, ‘Follow me and get 
your money.’ 

“We galloped to camp. ‘Load up and hitch 
up,’ I said to the cook, ‘and follow me.’ 

“Then I called the horse wrangler. ‘Drive up 
your remuda,’ I said to him, ‘and follow the 
chuck wagon.’ 

“When we were all ready, we struck a high 
trot for town, and a sight we must have made— 
I in the lead, the five cowboys who had been fired 
on account of their faithlessness swinging after 
170 


The Language of Brands 

me, then the chuck wagon with six mules hitched 
to it, and then a hundred and fifty saddle horses 
with the horse wrangler and two other hands 
driving them. I drew up in front of the bank, 
and the outfit halted. So did traffic. 

“ ‘Come here/ I yelled to the banker, who was 
already at the door. ‘Come out here and look 
at my identification/ 

“He came laughing. 

“ ‘Now/ I said, ‘I guess you know what the 
King Ranch brand is—Running W on the side 
and K on the jaw. Well, there are a hundred 
and fifty saddle horses branded K W. There’s 
a wagon with K W branded on the side-boards 
and chuck box. Look at the cook’s saddle on the 
mule he’s riding, and you’ll see K W on it. In 
fact, everything and everybody in this outfit is 
branded K W/ 

“The banker was impressed, all right. With¬ 
out another word he cashed the check signed by 
me as a representative of the King Ranch. The 
quitters unsaddled their horses right there in the 
street and turned them loose with the remuda. 
Then the Running W outfit rolled on for Chey¬ 
enne.” 

The average cowboy is so conscious of brands 
that he puts them on everything around him. He 
whittles them on sticks. He burns them into the 
planks of branding chutes and on pasture gates. 

171 



172 


Come out here,” I yelled to the banker, “and look at my identification. 











































































The Language of Brands 


He smears them with axle grease across the doors 
of barns and garages. He paints them with 
charcoal on the rock walls of canyons in which 
he has made a camp fire. He carves them into 
the bark of a tree under which he camps. He 
carves them into his spur straps, his leggins, and 
boot tops. Often a rancher will have a saddler 
stamp his brand into a new saddle; and some¬ 
times he has it painted on the door of his auto¬ 
mobile. It is his coat-of-arms. Many a cook 
has punched with his fork the ranch coat-of-arms 
into the top crust of a wild plum cobbler. Boys 
brought up on the range “play ranch” and with 
baling wire for “running irons” brand oak balls, 
sawed-off tips of horns, spools, and other objects 
used to represent cattle, sheep, and horses. 

A thorough-going cowman takes pride in his 
memory for brands and is a master of the brand 
language. This language in general follows cer¬ 
tain rules. The characters of a brand read from 
top to bottom and from left to right. A ma¬ 
jority of the cattle brands in use are so simple 
that nearly anyone, once he has mastered a few 
principles, can “call” them properly. H 4 can 


be nothing else than “H Four.” 



will 


easily be read as “H Triangle.” 



173 


On the Open Range 


plainly “Bar B Bar” and ^ * s reac * in the same 


way. 


But not all brands are so simple. Only the 

initiated recognize | ~~ as “Lazy H,” or 

as “Crazy Three.” Any letter “too tired to stand 
up” is “lazy,” though if it is merely in a slant¬ 
ing, or oblique, position and not on its back, it 

is said to be “tumbling.” or is “Tum¬ 
bling T.” 

A letter with curves at the ends is often said 
to be “running.” The most noted illustration 
of this principle is the “Running W” brand, 

of the million-acre King Ranch. 

A letter or figure with “wings” to it is “flying.” 

Thus W is the “Flying W.” 

Brands “walk,” “drag,” “swing,” and “rock” 

as well as they “run” and “fly.” is the 

“Walking F,” and is the “Walking A.” 


174 


The Language of Brands 
The projection at the bottom of the figure makes 
the “Drag Seven.” L suspended from a 

curve, T , becomes the “Swinging L.” Many 
brands are on “rockers,” as the “Rocking H,” 
Ss . But if the “rocker” is unjoined, then 

it is a “half-” or “quarter-circle”; so J is 
“H Half-Circle.” 

Sometimes a brand rests on a bench, as 


X 


the “Y Bench.” V-shaped prongs attached to 
some part of a letter make it “forked . 5 

is “Forked S,” but -tV- instead of being 

called “Forked N” is called “Forked Lightning.” 

A straight mark is usually called a “bar,” but 
if it is very long or leaning at an angle to the 
normal horizontal position, it is likely to be 

called a “slash.” The \ / is called “Cut and 

175 


On the Open Range 


Slash.” f ■ -/ is “Bradded Dash.” John 

Chisum, noted cowman of the Pecos, branded 
20,000 calves each year with a straight line run¬ 
ning from shoulder to tail, and that “bar” 
was known all over the cattle country as the 
“Fence Rail.” A brand burner added to it thus 

__ and the result was known 

both as “Knot on the Rail” and “Bug on the 

Rail.” o—o might be O Bar O, but it isn’t. 

It is “Hobble O,” for it resembles a pair of 
horse hobbles. 

One time a rancher started a new brand made 

thus, . Somebody asked him what he called 

it. “Quien sabe?'' (Who knows?) he replied. 
And as the “Quien Sabe” brand it was known 
ever afterwards and was placed on tens of thou¬ 
sands of cattle. Looking through a mixed herd 
of cattle or a brand book, one might note many 
brands of apparently a quien sabe nature, but 
somehow the range men have usually found a 
name for the most nameless device. 

Fanciful designs frequently have fanciful 
names that could never be guessed even 
by good cowmen not familiar with the local 
176 



The Language oe Brands 
interpretation of the brand. For instance, 



was known on the Colorado 


River in Texas as “Pot Hooks.” When the 
owners moved their cattle to a new ranch sev¬ 
eral hundred miles to the southwest, the brand 
took the name of “Straddle Bug.” A well- 
known brand was the “Gourd and Vine.” It 


was run in this manner, 


so 


as to cover the whole side of an animal, and while 
everybody called it “Gourd and Vine,” no 
stranger would at first sight of it ever guess the 
name. 

Many owners use their initials in brands and 
sometimes even spell out their names. John M. 
Doak took D 0 K for his brand. With rare 
simplicity Mrs. Katie Barr spelled out her whole 


name in 


KT 


“K T Bar.’ 


Jack Barber ap¬ 


proached the sound of his last name with 



Pete Coffin had both his jest and his name in 



A man by the name of Hightower used 


177 


On the Open Range 


Hlff . Napoleon Daniel spelled his nick¬ 
name in BONY. A man by the name of 
Float devised , out of which the letters 


FLOT can be picked, and here “Flot” equals 
“Float.” 

Instead of telling the owner’s name, a brand 
may suggest something of his biography. J. C. 
Studer was a blacksmith working for the Santa 
Fe Railroad while it was building west. He fell 
in love with the country, invested his savings in 
land and cattle, and out of respect for his trade 


adopted an anvil, , as his brand. When 

Thomas Decrow, a sea captain, gave up sailing 
for ranching, it was natural that he should choose 

an anchor, | Q-, for his brand. 


A cowman as a rule wants a brand that is plain 
and easily read. Long and complicated brands 
are nowadays the exception. At a time when 
brand-burners were more active than they are 
now, brands were larger and more intricate. 

A brand-burner is a cow thief who attempts 
to destroy the lawful owner’s claim to an animal 
by changing the brand. He tries to burn over 
178 



The Language of Brands 

the old brand so that it will no longer be recog¬ 
nized and at the same time he tries to add to it 
in such a way that the brand will be taken for 
his. Some humorous anecdotes are told about 
brand tampering. 

A ranchman started the I C brand. Be¬ 
fore long he noticed that certain cattle in his herd 

wore the brand icu , and then he heard 
of a man in the country claiming that brand. 
Not to be outdone, he did a little brand “doctor¬ 
ing” himself, and soon all the cattle were wear¬ 
ing tcua . Then there was the fellow 

who started with B 4* for a brand. A long¬ 
horn neighbor presently claimed that cattle 

branded B 4- U were his — and the B4U 
brand was rapidly becoming more prominent 
than B4. Then the king of brand alterers rode 
in and before long nobody could find anything 

on the range that was not branded B H • 

If brands could always be added to so easily 
and if they could be subtracted from as well as 
added to, the problem of the brand-burner would 
be much simpler; but in brands, as in Scripture, 
what is writ is writ. In addition to adding a 
fresh figure or mark to an old device, the brand- 
burner must try to cover up his alterations. For 
179 


On the Open Range 


i p. 


instance, one cattle company gave 
“Seven P,” for a brand. A thief ran it into 

~| P, “Seven Up.” But expert range men 


can usually detect such mutilations. The new 
part never has the same look as the old part that 
has been reburned. 

One of the cattle kings of trail days was Dil¬ 
lard R. Fant. The brand he gave for many 
years was three F’s— F on the left jaw, F on the 
left side, and F on the left thigh. One day at a 
round-up on his ranch down the Nueces River, 
Fant espied a cow freshly branded that looked 
to him like one of his own animals. On the left 


jaw the cow had 


J—; on the left side 



and on the left thigh pJ . 

Fant scrutinized the cow a minute, and then 
he read the brand off so that everybody could 
hear: “John Porgy, Poor, Unfortunate, Pitiful 
Pup.” 

John Porgy was an Irishman short on cattle 
but long on the rope who was trying to get a 
start. His attempt to burn out Fant’s three F’s 
resulted in nothing but a joke. 

180 



The Language of Brands 


The best known story of brand-burning lias, 
fittingly, to do with the largest ranch the United 
States of America has known, the X I T, the 
3,000,000 acres of which were granted by the 
state of Texas to the Capitol Syndicate in ex¬ 
change for the present capitol at Austin. Wher¬ 
ever men talk of brands—and that is wher¬ 
ever range cattle graze—the story of the “Star 
Cross burn” is told. 

Range rustlers had tried and tried to figure 
out a way to turn X I T into another brand that 
would not give itself away. At last, so the yai*n 
goes, a clever rider solved the problem. He re¬ 
pealed his secret to no one; he never blurred a 
brand. He was an artist. Nevertheless he was 
finally brought to trial. The evidence was con¬ 
clusive that he had built up from nothing a herd 


of cattle branded “Star Cross,” 



, but 


the prosecuting attorney was unable to inform 
the jury how X I T could be altered into that 
symbol. So the rustler was freed. The X I T 
people were helpless. They offered him $5,000 
if he would tell them how he achieved the Star 
Cross and would quit burning it on their cattle. 
Then the legendary rustler told his secret. 

181 


On the Open Range 


Among the thousands of calves branded each 
year on the X I T Ranch many of them had one 
or more of the letters imperfectly placed. The 
rustler looked for animals on which the T was 



XI 


slanting. When he found 



ran it into 


Many brand-burners have been clever, but 
probably not one of them ever gained anything 
by his cleverness. After all, a great majority of 
the range men have always been honest men and 
among them brands on cattle have served well 
the purpose for which they are designed; that is 
to identify and maintain ownership. On ranches 
cattle are branded today by the millions just as 
they were branded during the days of the open 
range. 

If branding could be avoided it would be. 
Humane societies have protested against it, but, 
despite many experiments, nothing has been 
found to take its place. Branding is not unduly 
cruel, and the pain caused by it lasts only a short 
time. As long as there are ranches, there will 
be brands. 


182 




Chapter X 


INDIAN CAPTIVES 

While the accounts of Indian fighters may 
sometimes be thrilling, they are never—to me at 
least—so interesting as the experiences of cap¬ 
tives who by association with their captors learned 
the ways of primitive life. Yet, although thou¬ 
sands of boys have wanted to be Indian fighters, 
probably not one ever wished to fall into the 
hands of savage tormentors. Any person who 
has observed the uneasy watchfulness of deer and 
other wild animals at their drinking places may 
have an idea of the mental state maintained by 
pioneers subject to Indian raids. The danger 
of losing their stock, of having their homes 
burned down, and of being killed was enough to 
keep these settlers alert. 

Added to these dangers was the ever present 
possibility that Indians might carry off children 
and young women. A father who rode away to 
hunt a horse or get a supply of provisions real¬ 
ized that he might return to find his house in ruins 
and his family either scalped or carried off. A 
mother might well become panic-stricken if her 
boy or girl slipped out of sight. 

183 


On the Open Range 


In order to make the children more watchful, 
they were told stories of other children that had 
been captured. As people pushed westward, thej^ 
took with them certain tales about the danger of 
Indians, and these tales were told over and over 
in far places until they became a part of the great 
American tradition. One of the tales that a 
woman from South Carolina used to tell her chil¬ 
dren and grandchildren in Texas went like this. 

The Crane's Drumstick 

The Georgia and Carolina Indians were not 
conquered when the colonies made peace with 
Great Britain, but for many years came down at 
intervals upon lonely farmhouses, killing and for¬ 
aging. 

Early one morning some Indians surprised a 
family named Huffman, who lived in South Car¬ 
olina, east of the Wateree River, and killed the 
father, mother, and all the children except one 
boy and a half-grown girl. The boy ran away 
fast and hid in a hollow log near the house, so 
that the Indians did not find him. They took the 
girl away with them, and as much plunder as they 
could carry. They made a straight shoot for the 
woods to the west, forcing the girl to walk and 
half run to keep up with them. Whenever they 
came to a stream, they would push her in and 
184 


Indian Captives 


make her wade it, though sometimes the water 
was nearly to her chin. 

Along in the afternoon, one of the Indians 
killed a crane, and they all stopped long enough 
to broil and eat it. They gave a drumstick to the 
child. But she felt too tired and sad and fright¬ 
ened to eat. So she just held the drumstick tight 
in her hand. 

Then they started on again. They walked all 
day through the forest, keeping free of the clear¬ 
ings. When night came, they stopped and made 
camp. As they had been on a raid all the night 
before, the Indians were very tired. They ate 
what they had and went to sleep early. The girl 
lay down, with the crane’s leg still in her hand, 
on a blanket that one of the braves spread out for 
her, and pretended to go to sleep. But after a 
while, she raised herself slowly and softly on her 
elbow, and listened and looked and moved around 
a little and watched the Indians to see if they 
stirred. When she was sure that they were all 
fast asleep, she tiptoed so that not a dead leaf 
rustled and thus picked her way out. 

Once beyond hearing, she began to run. The 
moon shone and she could see well enough. She 
did not know which way to go, but ran through 
bush and briar in the direction that she thought 
was right. Morning came and she kept on. She 
was afraid that if she stopped the Indians would 
185 


On the Open Range 


come and find her. She crossed a creek that 
looked like one she had waded the day before. 
About noon or a little later she came to a Stub¬ 
blefield. Beyond it was a river and on the other 
side a ferry boat. She recognized the Wateree 
crossing two miles from her home. A man came 
down to the ferry, and she called to him. But he 
ran back, fearing Indians. Then she stepped into 
the water and waded down the edge a few rods to 
a deep thicket of gall bushes—a kind of holly 
having small black berries. 

Not long after she had hidden herself, she saw 
two of her Indian captors come right on her 
tracks to the edge of the stream where she had 
waded in. She looked at them through the bushes 
and her poor heart quaked. But they looked 
across the river, spoke a few words to each other, 
and turned back. 

The girl watched to see if anyone came to get 
water or to cross on the ferry. She grew hungry, 
crouched there quiet in the gall bushes; and, see¬ 
ing that she had carried the crane’s drumstick in 
her hand since it was given to her the afternoon 
before, ate it and took heart. After what seemed 
to her a very long time, someone came down. She 
ran out where she could be seen and cried, “Come 
over quickly and take me across.” 

So she was ferried over the river. And the 
brother who had concealed himself in the hollow 
186 


Indian Captives 


log came, and each rejoiced that the other had 
escaped from the hands of the Indians. 

“Me Cynthy Ann!” 

But some of the captive children never escaped 
or were never ransomed to come back home. 
Perhaps the most famous of such captives in 
America was Cynthia Ann Parker. At the age 
of nine years she with her brother John, three 
years younger, another child, and two women 
were captured by Comanches at a stockade on the 
Navasota River in East Texas. 

This was in 1836. Twenty-four years later a 
band of frontiersmen charged on a camp of Co¬ 
manches and killed among others a noteworthy 
chief named Peta Nacona. One of the un- 
wounded captives was a woman with a baby. 
When the man who had run his horse down to 
overtake her saw that he had captured a woman, 
he was much disgusted and began debating with 
himself what he should do with her. About this 
time the leader of the frontiersmen rode up. 

“Why,” he exclaimed, “this is a white woman. 
Indians do not have blue eyes.” 

She could not speak a word of English. 
Through a Mexican interpreter it was learned 
that she was the wife of Peta Nacona, the slain 
chief. She was weeping, because, she said, she 
187 


On the Open Range 


had two sons and was afraid they had been killed. 
When told that they had escaped, she brightened 
for a while, but she had no happiness at being 
restored to white people. 

After many attempts had been made to iden¬ 
tify the woman, an uncle of the Cynthia Ann who 
had been captured so many years before came. 
She had no words to tell her story. The white 
people only knew that she was white. After the 
uncle had spoken the words “Cynthia Ann” sev¬ 
eral times, a light suddenly came into the strange 
woman’s face and, pointing to her breast, she 
said, “Me Cynthy Ann.” 

She was Cynthia Ann. Ivinspeople treated her 
kindly and she learned to weave and sew and to 
speak broken English, but she never ceased to 
yearn for the wild life to which she had grown 
accustomed. After a few years she died. It 
seems a tragedy that she did not live to know 
that one of her sons who escaped, Quanah Par¬ 
ker, became a great chief among the Comanches. 
A town in Oklahoma and a town in Texas are 
both named for him. 

As for Cynthia Ann’s brother John, he lived 
with the Comanches until, as with his sister, 
hardly a memory of his own race remained in 
his mind. After he had grown to be a thorough 
warrior, he went with a raiding party down into 
Mexico. As was customary, the raiders captured 
188 


Indian Captives 


horses, children, and young girls. Among the 
girls was a senorita named Juanita. John Par¬ 
ker at once fell in love with her, and on the way 
out of Mexico protected her from the tortures 
and insults of his fierce companions. 

Then far out on the plains John was violently 
attacked by smallpox—a scourge that frequently 
swept through Indian tribes. He could go no 
farther. The warriors could not or would not 
tarry for him. They decided to leave him by a 
water hole, with some dried venison and corn, 
there in solitude to die or recover. But the little 
Mexican girl pleaded that she be left to care for 
her lover. The request was granted. 

The imagination can weave many pictures of 
this couple by the lonely water hole, antelopes 
gazing upon them by day and the eyes of wolves 
shining against the fire light around them by 
night. It was hundreds of miles back to the 
Mexican girl’s people. It was many days’ ride 
on ahead to the adopted people of the white man, 
and the white man, so far as he knew, had no 
people of his own. With the help of Juanita, 
John at length recovered. He was through liv¬ 
ing with the Indians forever. With Juanita he 
turned back, built himself and his mate a jacal 
(cabin) below the Rio Grande, and raised a 
family of children whom he taught to dodge the 
Comanches. 


189 


On the Open Range 


The Boy Hermit 

One day in the spring of 1870 while Herman 
Lehmann, whose parents had emigrated from 
Germany to Texas, was out in a wheat field scar¬ 
ing the birds off the grain, a band of Apache In¬ 
dians swooped down upon him. He was eleven 
years old. He fought like a tiger, but two braves, 
after tearing all his clothes off, succeeded in tying 
him on the back of a mustang pony. Then, 
plunging through a thicket of thorns, they gal¬ 
loped with him out of the country. 

He was taught to eat Indian foods and to herd 
the Indian ponies. After trying in vain to es¬ 
cape, he at length became so much one of the 
Apaches that he helped them fight Comanches 
and then scalped a Mexican. He even went on 
raids against his own race. Once in a brush with 
the Texas rangers he got away from them, for he 
had learned to fear all white men. He found 
gold in some wild mountains and then was lost in 
a snowstorm. He and other warriors captured a 
herd of cattle from trail drivers. All this and 
much else make the narrative of Herman Leh¬ 
mann’s life rarely interesting. But nothing is 
more interesting than the account of how he lived 
as a hermit. 1 

i Rewritten from Nine Years with the Indians , by Herman 
Lehmann. Frontier Times, Bandera, Texas. 

190 


Indian Captives 


When I was in my sixteenth year, Carnoviste, 
the good-hearted Apache who had been as a father 
to me, was killed in a quarrel with a medicine 
man. The medicine man then turned upon me, 
and to save my own life I had to kill him. That 
act made me an outlaw among my adopted peo¬ 
ple. I must flee. Before leaving, I stole in the 
darkness to the tent of Carnoviste’s sister to say 
good-bye. She told me that I must ride a certain 
gray horse—the best in the herd. Then she 
helped me gather up my bow and arrows, a blan¬ 
ket, and some provisions. I took also the gun 
with which the medicine man had tried to murder 
me. 

After riding for many days over arid plains, 
rugged hills, and a waterless desert, where I al¬ 
most perished from thirst, I came to a deep nar¬ 
row canyon down which flowed a small stream of 
clear water fringed by cottonwood trees. There 
was an abundance of grass for my horse, and I 
saw by tracks that deer and other game were 
plentiful. I determined to camp right here. I 
had long since become accustomed to living on a 
meat diet, and so with all the meat I wanted I 
was satisfied. A cave in one of the canyon walls 
afforded shelter and a hiding place. 

How long I lived in this solitary place, I can¬ 
not say, but I must have remained six or eight 
months. I kept no account of time. I was iso- 
191 


On the Open Range 


lated from the Indians and afraid of the whites. 
I regarded all men as possible enemies. Every 
day I rode or walked to the top of the bluff, there 
to keep watch, often for hours, against strangers. 
My fire was always kept smothered so that nei¬ 
ther smoke by day nor light in the darkness could 
betray my presence. Despite the great peace 
that is a part of nature, I did not live a peaceful 
life. I was too uneasy. 

One night I was startled from my sleep by a 
strange sound. Just what it was I could not at 
first tell, but it seemed to be that of a human 
voice. I stole outside my cave and listened. 
Presently I heard a loud laugh. The full moon 
high overhead lit up the canyon until it was al¬ 
most as bright as day. Going around a project¬ 
ing rock near my cave so as to get a good view 
down the canyon, I saw a large camp fire not 
three hundred yards away. I could see human 
figures moving about this fire, and their voices 
now came to me distinctly. 

Taking advantage of the growth of cotton¬ 
woods and willows along the stream, I slipped 
nearer to investigate. To my dismay I found 
that the newcomers were Apaches, every one of 
whom I knew. From their talk I gathered that 
they were returning from a raid and that a large 
herd of stolen horses was being held still farther 
down the canyon, they having ascended from the 
192 


Indian Captives 


mouth. They said nothing about me that I 
heard, and I presume they were not thinking 
about me. Returning to my cave, I quickly gath¬ 
ered up a supply of dried venison, caught my 
horse, which grazed near, rolled my blanket 
and a skin or two, and ascended the canyon 
until I reached a trail that led to the plain above. 
I had no idea where I was going, but I 
struck east. 

I rode for days, crossing a number of streams. 
On several occasions I saw men that I took to be 
either whites or Mexicans, but these I avoided, 
knowing that they would take me to be an 
Apache, the enemy to all men. At one stream 
I camped for some time. I would get bear-grass 
(a kind of yucca called also soap-weed) and love- 
vine and boil them in water until they became a 
thick ooze. Then with that I would wash my 
hair, which grew long, straight, and beautiful. 

When I left the Apaches, I had twenty-eight 
cartridges for my Winchester; every ball brought 
down a deer, antelope, or buffalo. The ammuni¬ 
tion lasted a good while, for in order to husband 
it I used bow and arrow to kill game. When the 
cartridges gave out, I was between the Pecos and 
the Rio Grande, and in a cave somewhere out in 
that desolate land I hid my gun. I hated to give 
it up, but it was useless without ammunition, and 
I knew where to find it if I ever wanted it again. 

193 


On the Open Range 


I suppose it is hidden in the cave yet; I have never 
returned to claim it. 

In this region I found game very scarce, and I 
had to eat cactus apples, sotol, and other vegeta¬ 
tion. I traveled north, and then food and water 
gave out entirely. Once I saw a drove of ante¬ 
lopes, but I could not kill one. I went seven days 
without food and water. I was about ready to 
give up, to lie down and die, when I found a 
skunk. I killed him, cooked him, and ate him, 
but I was careful not to eat too fast or too much 
at once. Soon after this I found some muddy 
water. I put grass over it to serve as a strainer 
so as to keep from swallowing flies and bugs in 
the water. After my horse had watered and 
grazed and rested and I had eaten more polecat 
and drunk more muddy water, I felt much re¬ 
freshed. Then I skimmed off the scum on the 
water and cut prickly pear leaves and put them 
in it to make the dregs settle. After this I filled 
my canteen, which was a gourd. 

I traveled on, getting now into a country that 
was less desert in nature. I came to some buf¬ 
faloes. I roped a young calf and after I had 
jerked him down and dragged him some distance, 
jumped off my horse to cut his throat. I knew 
that I was weak, but I thought I could manage 
the calf. I did not know how weak I was. The 
calf butted me over two or three times. Then I 
194 


Indian Captives 


tried to kill him with an arrow, but I did not have 
the strength to drive one into him, though I shot 
him dozens of times. Finally, I got on my horse 
and dragged the calf until he was near enough 
dead for me to finish him. 

In order to make a fire, I got two dry sticks 
and rubbed them together, but I was so weak I 
could barely make the friction strong enough to 
produce a spark. I shall never forget how grate¬ 
ful I was when the fire kindled up. I was careful 
not to have too much smoke. When I cut the 
meat, I was cautious not to offend the Great 
Spirit. If an Apache Indian cut or punched a 
hole in a piece of meat before or while cooking 
it, he offended the Great Spirit and was sure to 
have misfortune on the trip. I had been taught 
these superstitions so long that I adhered to 
them. 

When I left the place where I had killed the 
buffalo calf, I took plenty of meat with me. At 
night I put it under my head and soon fell asleep. 
I did not tie the horse, for he would not leave me. 
After I had been asleep a short while, I heard 
him snort and run up near me. I grabbed my 
my meat and equipment, mounted, and rode 
away. These night moves were nothing unusual 
for me. I was sure that nobody was after me, 
though I thought somebody might be passing 
near. 


195 


On the Open Range 


I did not go far before I halted, and, 
again placing the meat under my head, fell 
asleep. Again my horse aroused me. This time 
I saw what the trouble was. A big loho wolf was 
smelling under nty head for the meat. I remem¬ 
bered how Indians sometimes dressed in the skins 
of wolves in order to fool their prey or their ene¬ 
mies. I bounded up and let drive an arrow that 
ended that lobo’s career. Another was there to 
take his place. I killed him. I could hear wolves 
howling in that strange voice they have when they 
smell fresh meat. I had never seen them so bold. 
Once two of them came together. But an arrow 
is swift. Altogether I killed five lobos and 
drove more than that many away. 

I soon found myself on the buffalo range 
proper. Now that it was easy to get food, I 
grew very restless. As my saddle was hurt¬ 
ing the horse’s back, I now determined to 
make a new one. To make a saddle, the Indian 
provided himself with two forked limbs from a 
tree, each shaped like a Y. These he whittled 
down until they would more or less fit a horse’s 
back, one fork in front for the horn and one be¬ 
hind for the cantle. Then the forks were fastened 
together by strips of wood. Having made a 
saddle tree in this manner, I covered it with raw- 
hide, padded it with buffalo hair, and then cov¬ 
ered the padding with buckskin. I bent some wil- 
196 



“I bounded up and let drive an arrow that ended that lobo’s 

career.” 


197 

































































































































On the Open Range 


low sticks so that they would serve for stirrups. 
A buffalo robe made the seat comfortable. 

I was a long, long time perfecting this saddle, 
but finally it fit superbly and rode comfortably. 
I had a file, the point of which I used to punch 
holes. Using the sinews of deer for thread and 
tanned buffalo hide for leather, I made myself 
new moccasins. 

In locating camp, I usually picked rough 
places, but never a place where I could be 
hemmed up. I was constantly shifting my posi¬ 
tion. One day I came in sight of a village and 
saw two men riding along. I turned and rode in 
the opposite direction as fast as my horse could 
carry me. I drifted back into the Pecos River 
country, where there were few people of any kind 
and no white men. Out there I killed a bear and 
feasted on a roast that had plenty of fat in it. At 
night I often spent hours watching the constella¬ 
tions. My shield was painted with stars that rep¬ 
resented, both in size and in their directions from 
each other, the best known stars overhead. 

After I had led this wandering, solitary, hid¬ 
ing life for a year or more, I came near a camp of 
Comanches on the plains. I had met Comanches 
frequently while I was with the Apaches. I did 
not know their language, but I determined to 
join them. 

I walked right into their camp. An old squaw 
198 


Indian Captives 


wanted to have me killed. Then through one of 
the Comanches who spoke the Apache language, 
I told why I had deserted my people. I urged 
that I was, though white, an Indian by adoption. 
I said truthfully that I loved the Indians and 
hated the whites. I showed them the scalps of 
white men dangling from my shield. I declared 
that I wanted to join the Comanches and become 
one of their warriors. After hearing my story in 
detail, the Comanches decided to let me stay with 
them. Two braves helped me stake my horse. 
Some squaws gave me plenty to eat and spread 
me a comfortable pallet. That night I lay down 
for the first time in many moons with a feeling of 
security and contentment. I knew that I was 
among friends. 

I was given a Comanche name, Montechena, 
and that name appears today on the tribal records 
at Washington—Montechena Herman Leh¬ 
mann. I became well acquainted with Quanah 
Parker, and with his warriors made several raids. 
But for the Indians the days of wandering 
and raiding were about to end forever. One day 
after we had settled down on our reservation, I 
met General MacKenzie at Fort Sill. This was in 
1878. He persuaded me to go home. I left my 
horses with Quanah Parker and set out for my 
childhood home. I found my mother still living. 
She had never ceased hoping for my return. 

199 


On the Open Range 


I had forgotten my native tongue entirely. 
The manners and customs of the civilized people 
were totally foreign to me. One day soon after 
my arrival my family took me to a revival meet¬ 
ing. I saw people shouting and singing. I 
thought that a war dance was going on, and right 
there I plunged in with an exhibition of the Co¬ 
manche war dance that broke up the meeting. I 
went to no more meetings until I learned to speak 
English. Clothes and shoes cramped and tor¬ 
tured me. Sometimes I would cast them off for 
moccasins and a breech clout. When I went 
hunting, I wanted at first to kill calves, but my 
brother, who accompanied me, told me by signs 
that I must not do this. I wanted to steal all the 
horses we saw. I must not do that. At last I 
grew rather used to the white man’s ways. I am 
still enrolled as a member of the Comanche tribe, 
however, and I still live with them a good part of 
the time. 

Such in brief is a part of Herman Lehmann’s 
story. A few years ago at a reunion of pioneers 
I saw this 41 ‘White Indian” act a part in a singular 
and dramatic scene. Dressed in buckskin and 
wearing a pair of buffalo horns on his head, for 
an hour or more he rehearsed his experiences to 
the old-timers. Among other things he related 
how the rangers once attacked a party of 
200 


Indian Captives 


Apaches he was with and shot a horse down under 
him. He described the place, the year, all the 
details. 

Among the listeners was James B. Gillett, for¬ 
merly of the Texas rangers. 

“I was with the rangers who attacked those 
Apaches,” he said. “I saw the horse shot from 
under you. I saw him fall and pin you to the 
ground. As I rushed by chasing an Indian, I 
noted that you were white. I intended to return 
and rescue you. When I got back from the chase, 
you were gone. We were in a prairie. I have 
always wondered how you escaped.” 

“I escaped by crawling through the grass like 
a snake,” Herman Lehmann replied. 

The ex-ranger and the ex-Apache shook hands. 
It had been more than fifty years since their first 
meeting. 



201 














Chapter XI 


A FUGITIVE FROM GOLIAD 

John C. Duval, nineteen years old at the 
time, came to Texas to help the Texans win in¬ 
dependence from Mexico. He was among the 
forces surrendered by Colonel James W. Fannin 
to the Mexicans. On the morning of March 27, 
1836, a few days after the surrender, the pris¬ 
oners were marched out of Goliad into the coun¬ 
try, lined up, and shot down. This was the 
famous Goliad Massacre. During the firing a 
few of the prisoners escaped, among them young 
Duval. Years later in a book entitled Early 
Times in Texas he wrote an account of his es¬ 
cape and of his adventures while trying to reach 
the main Texas army. This army was retreating 
eastward and at the same time all the settlers 
were fleeing panic-stricken before the advancing 
Mexicans. 

Early Times in Texas is one of the most vivid 
narratives in the English language. Moreover, 
it represents the long conflict between English- 
speaking frontiersmen and Mexicans that wrote 
itself in blood from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
202 


A Fugitive from Goliad 


shores of the Pacific. The extracts that follow 
are much abridged. 

At dawn on Palm Sunday, March 27, a Mexi¬ 
can officer came to us and ordered us to make 
ready for a march. He told us that we were 
to be liberated on parole, and that arrangements 
had been made to send us to New Orleans. This 
was joyful news to us, and we lost no time in 
making preparations to leave the rock walls of 
Goliad. When all was ready, we were formed 
into three divisions and each was marched out 
under a strong guard. As we passed by some 
Mexican women who were standing near the 
main entrance of the fort, I heard them say, 
“Pobrecitos” (poor fellows), but the incident at 
the time made little impression upon my mind. 

Goliad is on the San Antonio River. One of 
the three divisions was marched toward the lower 
ford; one was marched out the San Patricio 
road; and the other, my own division, took the 
road leading up the river to San Antonio. A 
double file of guards marched on each side of the 
column, in which the prisoners walked two 
abreast. After we had gone about half a mile, 
a halt was ordered on a bald prairie some five 
hundred yards from the river, which afforded the 
only timber anywhere near, and the guards on 
the side next to the river moved around to the 
203 


On the Open Range 


opposite side. Hardly had this maneuver been 
executed, when I heard a heavy firing of mus¬ 
ketry in the directions taken by the other two 
divisions. Some one near me exclaimed, “Boys, 
they are going to shoot us!” At the same instant 
I heard the clicking of musket locks all along the 
Mexican line. As I turned to look, the Mexi¬ 
cans fired upon us, killing probably one hun¬ 
dred out of one hundred and fifty men in the 
division. 

The man in front of me was shot dead, and in 
falling he knocked me down. I did not get up 
for a moment, and when I arose to my feet, I 
found that the whole Mexican line had charged 
over me in hot pursuit of prisoners who had not 
been shot and who were fleeing towards the river. 
I followed after them, for I knew that escape 
on the prairie, which stretched away in every 
other direction, would be impossible, and I had 
nearly reached the river before I caught up with 
the Mexicans. I must go through them. 

As I plunged forward, a soldier charged upon 
me with his bayonet, his gun, I suppose, being 
empty. While he was in the act of drawing 
his musket back to make a lunge at me, one 
of our men coming from another direction 
ran between us, and the bayonet was driven 
through his body. In falling, the victim wrenched 
the bayonet in such a way as to prevent the 
204 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

Mexican from withdrawing it immediately. As 
I hurried on, I saw him trying to extricate it. 

Gaining the bank of the river, I plunged in. 
The water at this point was deep and swift but 
not wide, and, being a good swimmer, I soon 
reached the opposite bank, untouched by any of 
the bullets pattering around my head. But here 
I met with an unexpected difficulty. The bank 
was so steep that I could not possibly climb it, 
and I continued to swim down the river until I 
came to where the vine of a mustang grape hung 
from the bough of a leaning tree nearly to the 
surface of the water. This I caught hold of and 
was climbing up it hand over hand, sailor fashion, 
when a Mexican on the opposite bank fired at me 
with his escopeta, and with so true an aim, that 
he cut the vine in two just above my head. So 
down I came into the water again. I then swam 
on about a hundred yards until I reached a place 
where the bank was not quite so steep. There I 
clambered out. 

I ran through the line of timber and was about 
to strike into the open prairie beyond when I 
discovered a party of Mexican lancers immedi¬ 
ately in front of me, sitting on their horses and 
evidently awaiting such victims as myself. About 
the same time I glimpsed a man named Holliday 
gliding among the trees and managed to attract 
his attention before he exposed himself. Soon 
205 


On the Open Range 


we were joined by another fugitive named 
Brown. Holliday, although a brave man, was 
very much excited, and he advised that we take 
to the prairie and try to outrun the mounted 
Mexicans. We all knew that Mexicans would 
soon be scouring the brush behind us. Still, 
Brown and I hoped that something might pre¬ 
vent them from finding us in the woods. 

While we were debating, we saw four or five 
of our comrades rush out of the timber. The 
mounted Mexicans soon chased them down, 
speared them to death, and then dismounted to 
rob them of personal effects. Then we saw them 
mount and gallop down the river, where they 
had probably detected other fugitives. We at 
once took advantage of this opportunity to leave 
the strip of timber, which could give us shelter 
only a little while longer. A shallow draw jut¬ 
ting out across the prairie partly, though not 
wholly, concealed our movement, and why some 
Mexican did not see us, I do not know, for be¬ 
fore we reached cover we had to go more than 
a quarter of a mile without a single bush or tree 
to screen us. 

We traveled on five or six miles and then 
stopped in a thick grove to rest ourselves and 
wait for darkness before trying to go farther. 
All day long we heard at intervals irregular dis¬ 
charges of musketry in the distance, indicating, 
206 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

as we supposed, that Mexicans were overtaking 
other fugitives from the massacre and shooting 
them. 

As soon as it was dark we left our hiding place 
and set out in a northeasterly direction. We 
traveled all night and, except for a brief rest, 
all the next day. A cold, wet norther had blown 
up, and Brown, who had pulled off his coat and 
shoes before swimming the river into which the 
Mexicans chased him, was suffering severely. I 
had a little tinder box in my pocket containing 
a flint and steel, but the solitary piece of tinder 
was hardly bigger than a pin head. This I care¬ 
fully placed on some cotton pulled from the lin¬ 
ing of my fur cap, and, after many unsuccessful 
efforts, I at last managed to ignite it. With this 
we started a fire. The first thing I did then was 
to scorch a piece of cloth torn from my under¬ 
wear so that it could be used for tinder in the 
future. We gathered fuel and kept the fire 
going all night. 

When morning came, Brown’s naked feet were 
so sore and lacerated that it was evident he could 
not keep going without some sort of foot cover¬ 
ing. He happened to have a pair of scissors in 
his pocket—the only implement of any kind 
among us three. With this I cut off the legs of 
my boots and contrived to fashion from them a 
pair of sandals. After he was shod, Brown 
207 


On the Open Range 


separated the two blades of the scissors and gave 
me one of them, which proved to be of great 
service to me, for, by whetting it on stones, I gave 
it an edge and it answered pretty well for a knife. 

After we had traveled about an hour next 
morning, we lay down in some grass to rest for a 
few minutes. We had scarcely settled ourselves 
when we saw ten Mexican lancers riding along 
a trail that ran not fifty yards away. As luck 
would have it, just as they came opposite us, they 
met another Mexican. There they all halted and 
for what seemed an hour talked, sitting on their 
horses so that they had a fine view of the land. 
Only the grass lay between them and us, but for¬ 
tunately they did not look our way and after a 
while rode off. 

We traveled on until night and again en¬ 
camped in a thick grove of timber. For two days 
now we had eaten nothing. Deer, turkeys, and 
other game we had seen everywhere, but without 
guns we might as well have been on a desert de¬ 
void of wild life. It was a time of year also when 
there were no berries or wild fruits of any kind to 
be found. The pecans, which abound in that re¬ 
gion, had all fallen and either rotted or been eaten 
by wild hogs, deer, and other animals. We were 
as hungry as any wolf that serenaded us, but 
despite hunger we slept. 

On the third day we disagreed as to the direc- 
208 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

tion we were traveling and wandered about aim¬ 
lessly under the leadership of Holliday until I de¬ 
clared I would no longer follow him. He was 
city bred and untrained to the ways of the wilder¬ 
ness, while I had spent the greater part of my life 
in the open and knew that I possessed what fron¬ 
tiersmen call “hog-knowledge”—the instinct that 
enables some people to steer their way through 
pathless woods and prairies without compass or 
landmark. Holliday did not know his directions, 
but he found about a dozen wild onions, which he 
divided with Brown and me. They served but to 
aggravate the pangs of hunger. 

On the fourth day we entered a high, rolling 
prairie on which no water could be found, and 
now thirst was added to hunger. However, we 
found some Turk’s heads, a species of cactus 
about the size of a turnip, and the juice from 
these relieved us. 

The evening of the fifth day brought us to the 
Guadalupe River. As we approached it, we saw 
a cow and calf grazing near a bluff made by the 
bank. Approaching them cautiously, we at¬ 
tempted to drive them over it, hoping that one or 
the other would be disabled by the fall; but they 
broke through our line and made their way to the 
prairie, taking with them some steaks we stood 
very much in need of. 

Completely exhausted by our exertions and 
209 


On the Open Range 


suffering extremeiy from hunger, we now settled 
for the night in a sink twelve or fourteen feet 
deep. Here we were well protected from the 
cold wind, and a thick accumulation of leaves 
in the bottom of the sink gave us a snug bed. 
How long I had slept I do not know, but I was at 
length aroused by a rattling among the sticks and 
leaves above me, and, looking up, I discovered a 
wild sow with her litter of small pigs coming 
down the almost perpendicular bank of the sink. 
I silently grasped a billet of wood lying near me 
and awaited their approach. The old sow came 
on, totally unconscious of the fact that three rav¬ 
enous chaps were occupying her bed. When she 
and her pigs were within striking distance, I sud¬ 
denly sprang up and began a vigorous assault 
on the pigs. The noise aroused Brown and Hol¬ 
liday, and before the sow and her litter could es¬ 
cape up the steep bank, we had five pigs. We 
made a desperate attack on the old sow herself, 
but were too weak to capture her. Immediately 
we rekindled our fire, which had gone out, and 
after the pigs had roasted just about long 
enough to have their hair singed off, we disposed 
of all five. Greatly refreshed by our supper, we 
lay down again upon the leaves and slept until the 
sun was an hour or so high. 

While crossing the river, Brown all but 
drowned but was dragged out before sinking. 

210 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

We came now among antelopes as well as deer. 
Once we hid ourselves from Indians whom we saw 
riding horses. Another night passed and another 
day, and then we had a fine bit of luck. While I 
was collecting fuel to make a fire under a great 
live oak tree where we had decided to pass the 
night, I came upon a heap of leaves and twigs. 
Scraping off the top to see what was beneath, I 
found about half the carcass of a freshly killed 
deer that had been hidden by a panther. That 
supper of venison, without salt to season it, stolen 
from a mountain lion, tasted better than any ban¬ 
quet ever tasted to a king. 

As soon as it was fairly light we started on and 
traveled steadily until we struck the Lavaca 
River. While passing through the timbered bot¬ 
toms of this stream, we noticed several piles of 
rails and clapboards, the first indication of a set¬ 
tlement we had seen since leaving Goliad. We 
also saw a drove of hogs in the bottom, but, as 
they were genuine razorbacks, as wild and fleet as 
deer, we did not exhaust our strength in what 
we knew would be a hopeless attempt to capture 
them. 

Having crossed the river, we entered a dense 
growth that seemed to extend out for a great dis¬ 
tance. The day was cloudy, and without land¬ 
marks to go by we became lost in the bottom. It 
was nearly sunset before we reached the edge of 
211 


On the Open Range 


the prairie, and here we almost walked into about 
a dozen horses that were staked on the grass. I 
advised an immediate retreat, but Holliday con¬ 
ceived the idea that the horses belonged to a com¬ 
pany of Texas scouts and proposed that we con¬ 
ceal ourselves and observe the owners of the 
horses. He entered one clump of bushes and 
Brown and I another. 

A dog had all this time been barking at camp, 
which was in timber, and it probably aroused the 
suspicions of the campers that someone was try¬ 
ing to steal their horses. At any rate, a feAv min¬ 
utes after we had hidden ourselves a strapping 
ranchero came out of the timber and, having 
glanced over the horses to make sure they were 
safe, came as straight as he could walk to the 
bushes in which Brown and I lay hidden. At 
sight of us, he instantly sprang back, exclaiming, 
“Hey, Americanos, what are you doing here? 
Do you want to steal our horses?” He then made 
signs for us to follow him, which we obeyed, know¬ 
ing that resistance, weak as we were and without 
arms, would be useless and that one shout from 
the ranchero would bring the whole camp to his 
assistance. Holliday had escaped observation. 

By the time I arose to follow the Mexican, I 
had my mind made up not to go as far as the 
camp. I saw that our course would take us very 
near a point of the timber. As we walked along 
212 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

behind our captor, who cautiously kept some 
paces ahead of us all the time, looking back now 
and then to make sure we were following, Brown 
and I agreed to break away as soon as we ap¬ 
proached the timber. I told him I would meet 
him at the camp next morning, as it was probable 
the Mexicans would leave it within a short while. 

According to our plan, as soon as we came close 
to the edge of the timber, we skipped into it with¬ 
out even saying adios and in a moment were hid¬ 
den by the dense undergrowth. “Here are 
Americanos! Come quick and bring your guns!” 
we heard the ranchero shouting. But we did not 
wait for Mexicans or guns either. Brown went 
one way and I went the other. 

It was now nearly dark. After I had gone 
about a mile, I decided that it would be impos¬ 
sible for the Mexicans to find me and so pitched 
camp: This was speedily done by merely pitch¬ 
ing myself on the ground at the foot of a tree 
festooned with a thick growth of Spanish moss, 
which served in a measure to protect me from a 
drizzling rain that had begun to fall. I did not 
dare make a fire, lest the light betray me. 

That night I felt more despondent than I had 
felt at any time since making my escape from 
Goliad. I was separated from my companions 
and could know nothing of their fate. I was 
without arms to protect myself against wild 
213 


On the Open Range 


beasts or the more merciless Indians and Mexi¬ 
cans. I was hungry and chilled. A mournful 
wind in the trees was made more mournful by the 
howling of wolves around me. However, despite 
the gloom, I slept soundly. 

When I awoke, day was beginning to break, 
birds were singing, and squirrels were chattering. 
With a glad heart I made my way back to the 
place where Brown and I had separated. The 
Mexicans were gone, and so far as I could see 
across the prairies not a living thing was there 
save a herd of deer and a flock of wild turkeys. 
The camp fires left by the Mexicans still had live 
coals, but there was no sign of any kind to sug¬ 
gest the fate of my companions. I hoped to find 
some fragment of food thrown away, but the only 
thing I found was some egg shells. It was late 
afternoon before I gave up watching for Brown 
and Holliday and concluded to go on. 

Before I had gone a quarter of a mile, I hap¬ 
pened to look back towards the river and saw a 
house that had been hidden from my view by a 
strip of timber. I concluded at once to examine 
it. Perhaps it contained something to eat! 

I approached the house cautiously, for fear it 
might be occupied by a party of marauding Mex¬ 
icans, but, seeing nothing to excite my suspicions, 
I ventured on. I found the furniture broken and 
the fragments strewn over the floor, beds ripped 
214 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

open and their contents scattered around, and 
other evidences that the house .had been plun¬ 
dered. However, in an outhouse I found a piece 
of bacon and four or five ears of corn. I ground 
the corn in a steel mill that was fastened to a post 
in the yard. Then, having built a fire in one of 
the chimneys with which the main building was 
provided, I soon prepared a substantial meal of 
ash cake and broiled bacon. By the time I had 
eaten it, night had set in, and I at once fell asleep 
upon a pallet made from some of the tattered bed 
clothes strewn about the house. 

The next morning, fortified by a real breakfast 
of ash cake and bacon, I made another search for 
my companions. After tramping for miles and 
watching for hours, I decided that they had either 
been captured by the Mexicans or had gone on 
without waiting for me, and so I determined to 
pursue my own course alone. 

I may say here that I later learned from Holli¬ 
day’s own lips how two runaway negroes cap¬ 
tured him and threatened to kill him but let him 
loose. As for Brown, the ranchero who had cap¬ 
tured us followed him when we broke away, 
caught him, and took him to camp. There the 
Mexicans tied him in a standing position against 
a tree. As they cooked supper and ate, he told 
them he was starving and begged for something 
to eat. They laughed at him, saying that as they 
215 


On the Open Range 


were going to shoot him in the morning, food 
would do him no good. Then they went to sleep. 
In vain he tried to wrench himself loose. He 
stood, tightly tied, all night. At daylight one of 
the Mexicans arose, pinned a white bit of cloth on 
his breast, and told him that was the target. 
Then all presented arms. Brown cursed them for 
cowards and told them to shoot. Instead, they 
called him muy bravo (very brave) and put aside 
their guns. After they had breakfasted and sad¬ 
dled their horses, they loosed him, explaining that 
rather than kill him they had decided to leave him 
to starve to death. Then they rode away. He 
eventually reached the Texan army, and we met 
again to exchange experiences. 

But back to my own adventures. Abandoning 
all hope of rejoining my companions, I now set 
out across the prairie, as solitary as Robinson 
Crusoe. The game here was more abundant than 
I had seen it elsewhere. I am sure that a thou¬ 
sand deer were frequently in sight at one time. 
Here, too, I first saw the pinnated grouse, or 
prairie hen. At first I supposed the call of the 
cock was the distant lowing of wild cattle, some 
of which were grazing on the prairie. These wild 
cattle were scattered over a large portion of 
Texas at this time, unbranded and unclaimed, 
and were often hunted like game. They were 
really wilder than deer or buffaloes. Not so the 
216 


A Fugitive from Goliad 


wild turkeys, which were so unused to the sight 
of man that several times they permitted me to 
approach within a few paces of them. 

During the day I saw a party of Indians or 
Mexicans on horses, but they did not come near 
me. About three o’clock in the afternoon I 
reached the timber on the Navidad River, where 
I stopped to rest a while and lunch on some of the 
ash cake and bacon I had brought along. I found 
the river so swollen from recent rains that I was 
compelled to swim it. My usual procedure in 
crossing streams was to strip off my clothes and 
shoes, tie them on a dry piece of timber, and then 
push it across ahead of me while I swam. 

I had crossed the Navidad and had proceeded 
perhaps half a mile through the timbered bottom 
when I became aware of a dog barking behind 
me. At first I supposed the dog belonged to 
some family of settlers who had left it behind in 
their flight from the invading Mexican army. 
Soon, however, I noticed that although I was 
traveling in a straight course at a pretty rapid 
walk, the dog’s barking seemed to be drawing 
nearer. It was continuous. Then I suspected 
that the dog was trailing me and that someone 
was with him. I therefore hurried on and in 
about an hour reached the edge of the woods, 
which joined an immense prairie. The dog had 
not gained much on me, but he had not lost. I 
217 


On the Open Range 


must throw him off my track. I continued my 
course for several hundred yards into the prairie 
and then turned about and retraced my steps to 
the edge of the timber. There I sprang as far as 
I could to one side and walked about a hundred 
yards until I came to a fallen tree, among the 
limbs of which I concealed myself so that I could 
have a clear view of anything coming out of the 
bottom at the point I had left it. 

The dog’s barking was now growing louder 
and nearer every minute, and in a little while I 
saw him, followed by three Indians, emerge from 
the timber on my trail. One of the Indians held 
the dog by a leash and was armed with a gun; the 
other two had bows and lances. If I had been 
armed with the poorest pot-metal, muzzle-loading 
shotgun that was ever manufactured in Birming¬ 
ham, I should not have feared them, but I had 
no weapon more formidable than the scissors 
blade Brown had given me. So I lay low and 
watched. When the dog came to the place in the 
prairie where I had doubled back on my trail, he, 
of course, became confused, but the Indians, tak¬ 
ing it for granted, I suppose, that I had gone on 
in the direction they were following, urged and 
led the dog forward. 

I watched them until they disappeared and 
took considerable credit to myself for having 
saved my scalp so easily. I wanted to proceed 
218 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

in the direction the Indians had gone, but con¬ 
sidered it prudent to follow along the margin of 
the timber instead. After going several miles, I 
came to a clearing, on the opposite side of which 
I saw a house. Like all the houses in the path 
of the Mexicans, it had been deserted by its 
owners, but Mexicans had been there ahead of 
me and taken away everything eatable. I could 
not find an ounce of provender. 

But the house had a good bed that seemed to 
invite me. After a very frugal and unsatisfying 
meal upon the remnant of ash cake and bacon, 
I accepted the invitation and was soon fast 
asleep. 

It must have been about midnight when I was 
aroused by a noise that, after listening some 
time, I decided was the grunting of hogs beneath 
the house. The floor, as I had observed, was a 
foot or more above the ground. It was made of 
puncheons (hand-hewn slabs of timber) un¬ 
nailed and held in place solely by their own 
weight. Hunger suggested that I might, by 
quietly lifting a puncheon immediately above the 
spot where the hogs were lying, reach down and 
grab a porker. 

I tip-toed out of bed and, after putting my ear 
down first at one place and then at another, 
located the whereabouts of the hogs. Very 
quietly I lifted a puncheon out of place. Slowly 
219 


On the Open Range 


then I thrust a hand down and moved it about 
until it came in contact with the leg of a hog. I 
grabbed with all my might and at the same in¬ 
stant the hog began squealing and tugging with 
all his might. He was as much too large as the 
pigs had been too small. For a long time there 
was doubt as to whether I should succeed in 
drawing the hog up into the room with me or he 
would draw me down under the floor with him. 
I was determined to have pork for breakfast. 
At length I got the creature up and replaced the 
puncheon. How to kill and butcher him was 
the next question. The scissors blade was inade¬ 
quate. I went outside in the moonlight to look 
for a weapon. I found an old maul that was 
almost too heavy to lift, and after I had chased 
the hog around and around the room, finally dis¬ 
patched him. 

The exercise and the assurance of a full break¬ 
fast combined to make me sleep late. The sun 
was shining when I awoke. I found a piece of 
a broken drawing knife in the yard. With this 
in hand I dragged the hog to a spring near 
and butchered him. While the pork ribs were 
roasting, I discovered a box in which were some 
moulded rifle balls and a pouch of powder. If 
I could just find a gun now, I should be inde¬ 
pendent. After I had eaten four or five pounds 
of pork, I packed as much of it as I could in my 
220 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

knapsack and traveled on, beating up country 
so as to avoid the swamps near the coast, and 
keeping pretty much against the edge of 
woods. 

About dark I stopped near a pool of water. 
Just as I was going to bed on the grass, I saw 
a light spring up five or six hundred yards ahead 
of me. I determined to investigate. As the 
moon had not yet risen, I stood little danger of 
being detected by whoever was at the light. A 
nearer view revealed that it came from the chinks 
of a cabin. Then I made out some other cabins 
near it, all of them dark. 

The nearer I drew to the light, the more 
slowly and cautiously I crept. At every step I 
stopped to listen. Coming from the lighted 
cabin was a queer kind of rasping sound that I 
could not account for until I got a good look 
through one of the open chinks between the logs 
of the wall. There sat a solitary Mexican soldier 
on the floor shelling corn into a tub by rasping 
the ears on the edge of it. He had on his shot 
pouch and powder horn, but his gun was leaning 
against the wall near me and behind him. 
An opening between two logs, right by the 
gun, appeared large enough for a man’s arm 
to pass through. It occurred to me that I might 
be able to get the gun out unobserved. 

So I reached in, stealthily seized the muzzle of 
221 


On the Open Range 


the gun, and began to draw it slowly and care¬ 
fully through the crack. No doubt I should 
have succeeded in my attempt to draw it on out, 
had not the breech been so large that it stuck 
hard and fast between the logs. In my effort to 
force it through I made a noise. The soldier 
wheeled about and at the sight of his gun so 
mysteriously disappearing through the wall gave 
a loud yell. At the same time he pounced upon 
the breech and began pulling with all his might. 
Three or four dogs set up a furious barking. I 
was sure that more Mexicans must be about. I 
released the gun at once and made off at double 
quick time for the timber, the dogs at my heels. 
I picked up a stick and drove them off. I could 
hear a good deal of shouting and excited talking 
about the cabins, but I had little fear of being 
followed in the darkness. After going about a 
mile I stopped for the night, well secured by 
the woods. 

Failure to get the gun was a great disappoint¬ 
ment. Nevertheless I determined to keep my 
powder and lead and make a search at every 
house I should come to for some sort of gun. 
I was awakened by the gobbling of turkeys and 
discovered that I had spent the night almost 
under an immense roost. This day I saw many 
mustangs and had a chance to examine closely 
a giant tarantula. I spent a very long time 
222 




223 





































































































































On the Open Range 


fashioning a bow, with which I hoped to kill 
small game, but after I had made it I found that 
I had no string. I tried bear-grass twine and 
other makeshifts, but they all snapped in two. I 
fmalfy threw the bow away. 

My next adventure was at an abandoned 
house on Caney Creek, which runs for sixty or 
seventy miles through a continuous cane brake. 
It was close to sundown when I reached it. 
Here, while searching for anything in the way 
of provisions that had been overlooked by Mexi¬ 
cans, I heard a chicken squawking as if she were 
being chased by a varmint. Stepping to the 
door, I saw a hen racing just ahead of a very 
large wildcat. At once I grabbed a stick of 
wood and prepared to contest the fowl with the 
wildcat. 

When he saw me coming towards him, he quit 
running the hen but showed not the least dispo¬ 
sition to abandon the field. I advanced to within 
a few paces of where he stood, humping his back 
and showing his teeth, and let drive at his head 
with the stick. It struck him on the side, and 
instantly he gave a scream and leaped towards 
me. I made for the house and got inside the 
door just in time to slam it in the wildcat’s face. 
After standing in front of it some. time, he 
moved leisurely off towards the woods and I saw 
him no more. The hen meantime had gone to 
224 


A Fugitive from Goliad 

roost in a tree, where I had little trouble in 
catching her. 

I was now in a section of country where 
numerous settlers had built their homes, and a 
short time after setting out next morning, I ap¬ 
proached a house from which a half dozen dogs 
rushed to meet me. I picked up a stick to de¬ 
fend myself, but as soon as they came near 
enough to ascertain that I was an American, 
they began to leap and jump around me as dogs 
do when they see their masters after a long ab¬ 
sence. I was as tanned as any Mexican or In¬ 
dian, but the dogs understood the difference. 

Upon entering the house, I knew at once that 
no marauders had found this place. Everything 
was untouched — furniture, cases of books, 
shelves of bed clothes and wearing apparel, cribs 
of corn, a smoke house containing at least a thou¬ 
sand pounds of bacon, and a shed room bounti¬ 
fully stocked with a barrel of brown sugar, a 
half sack of coffee, and a vast quantity of pota¬ 
toes and pumpkins. In the yard were a great 
many chickens and ducks that had evidently been 
well protected from varmints by the dogs. The 
first thing I did was to feed the dogs a side of 
bacon; then I cooked myself a square meal, in¬ 
cluding coffee—the first I had tasted since leav¬ 
ing Goliad. When, with book in hand, I lay 
down in one of the comfortable, clean beds for a 
22 5 


On the Open Range 


nap, I knew that I had attained the height of 
luxury and plenty. 

Mexicans might arrive at any moment, but, 
even at the risk of being captured, I determined 
to stay here and recuperate my strength. I ex¬ 
changed my worn-out and dirty clothes for good, 
clean ones. And then I found what I wanted 
above all else—a gun. But it was without a 
hammer and was therefore worthless. One of 
the luxuries this bountiful home provided was 
eggs. Not one had been touched by the dogs, I 
believe—proof of their breeding and training. 

On the fourth morning after my arrival, I 
concluded that I had eaten enough fried chicken, 
slept enough in a civilized bed, and otherwise re¬ 
cuperated sufficiently to warrant my traveling 
on. Preparatory to leaving, I packed up as 
much sugar, coffee, and bacon as I could carry, 
together with five or six pounds of meal which I 
had ground in a steel mill. I also took a tin cup 
and two butcher knives. Then I threw out 
enough bacon to last the dogs a month and told 
them good-bye. 

Imagine my chagrin when, a few hundred 
yards from the house, I found the entire pack at 
my heels. No doubt they had detected my prep¬ 
arations to leave for good and had decided to 
stay with me. All attempts to drive them back 
proved futile. Yet their presence would make 
226 


A Fugitive from Goliad 


safe travel through the country, where I must 
keep silent and hidden, impossible. There was 
nothing to do but return to the house and devise 
some way of slipping off. 

That night I noticed particularly where the 
dogs slept, and about midnight I quietly left so as 
not to disturb them. I had gone perhaps half 
a mile down the edge of the cane brake when I 
heard the pattering of feet behind me and turned 
to find one of the dogs following. I beat him 
severely with a stick, but he only whined and 
crouched at my feet. Finally I determined to 
cut his throat with one of the butcher knives, but 
as I grasped him and pulled the knife, he looked 
up so piteously and trembled so gently that I 
had to abandon my murderous intention. Per¬ 
haps, after all, I thought, I can manage with 
just one dog. I thought too of how much com¬ 
pany he would be. Having made the decision to 
keep him, I turned him loose and he showed 
great joy. He was a cross, I judged, between 
an English bull and a Newfoundland. Within 
a few days I had him trained to lie down at my 
command and to remain at camp and keep guard 
while I went off foraging or reconnoitering. I 
named him Scout. 

The difficulty now was to find a way through 
the great cane brake. It seemed impenetrable. 
I knew there must be a road somewhere, but 
227 


On the Open Range 


miles of tramping failed to reveal any sign of 
it. In the afternoon I decided to cut my way 
through and began working with a butcher 
knife, but when, after hours of diligent labor, 
I found that I had gone only about three hun¬ 
dred yards, I quit to climb one of the trees that 
grew scatteringly in the cane, for a survey of 
the country. I saw an ocean of cane extending 
as far north and as far south as my eye could 
reach, while towards the east—the .wav I needed 
to go—it seemed to extend for about four miles. 
Cutting through four miles of cane was a bigger 
job than I had contracted for. 

I descended from the tree and with Scout at 
my heels made my way back to the prairie, at 
the edge of which I lay down under a tree to rest. 
Almost immediately I was asleep, but I could 
not have dozed long before I was awakened by 
the growls of Scout and a scuffling noise above 
me. Looking up, I saw a big black bear coming 
down the tree. Calling Scout off, I respectfully 
gave the bear ground and went on examining 
the edgfe of the cane brake for an entrance. 

Late in the day I came to a trail along which 
were wagon tracks. It led into the brake, but I 
had not penetrated the cane a great distance 
until I came to a kind of prairie island, cane 
growing all around it. Here was a field that 
had been cultivated, and across the field I saw 
228 


A Fugitive from Goliad 


a house. As I drew near, I heard chickens and 
pigs, but there were no fresh tracks of people 
or horses and no smoke was floating up from the 
chimney. The house was an ample one of four 
large rooms, a wide hall running between them, 
and a deep gallery in front, all well sheltered by 
live oak and pecan trees. Judging from the way 
it was furnished and from the negro quarters 
near by, it must have belonged to a substantial 
planter. 

In addition to a bountiful supply of staple 
groceries, the place yielded such luxuries as a 
pipe and tobacco, jars of peach preserves, and 
a can of honey. I proposed to make it my head¬ 
quarters until I should find a passage through 
the cane brake. I knew that settlers had passed 
through the cane somewhere and that if I kept 
looking long enough I should find the passage. 

One day while exploring, I came near running 
into a detachment of Mexican cavalry, and, 
huddled down in some tall rushes, I had to choke 
Scout to keep him from growling. After I had 
slept every night for a week in this perfectly 
hidden plantation, which I began to call “home,” 
I found a dim passage into the cane. I now re¬ 
turned “home” for just one more night’s sleep 
and for a supply of provisions, which included 
plenty of coffee, two bottles of honey, and salt 
as well as bacon, sugar, and corn meal. When 
229 


On the Open Range 

I was ready to depart I scribbled with a bit of 
charcoal the following “due bill” upon the wall 
of my sleeping apartment: 

“John C. Duval, an American captured by the 
Mexicans but escaped from them at Goliad, is 
indebted to the proprietor of this house for one 
week’s board and lodging and some extras, and 
will pay for the same on demand.” 

The demand has never been made. 

Now followed days of walking—not always in 
a straight line. I was led astray by a mirage. 
I was turned by a prairie fire. I watched some 
mounted Mexicans traveling west in a great 
hurry and in loose formation. My supply of 
food was exhausted and I was wishing desper¬ 
ately that I might run into another abandoned 
plantation when one day, while I was drying my 
clothes at a fire, I heard Scout growl and then 
heard a strong, rough voice say in English, “Call 
your dog off.” 

The man was one of the spies attached to Sam 
Houston’s army. He told me how the Mexicans 
had been defeated a short time before in the 
battle of San Jacinto and how already Texas 
families were returning to their homes. He took 
me to his camp and soon had some fresh biscuits 
cooking. I was back in civilization once more. 


230 


Chapter XII 

STORIES THAT NAMES TELL 

Names, particularly of places, tell stories. As 
a country changes, new names are added, but 
the names of streams and other important geo¬ 
graphic features often remain the same, keeping 
alive the memory of vanished inhabitants and 
taking on legendary explanation. The Indians 
are driven back, but lovely Indian names like 
Washita, Arkansas, Chillicothe, Yavapai, and 
Tucumcari live on to delight the ear and inter¬ 
est inquiring minds. The Spaniards who ex¬ 
plored such a vast portion of the United States 
recede, but the names they gave persist every¬ 
where—Colorado, Nevada, California, Cimar¬ 
ron, Los Angeles, Mariposa, Nueces, and thou¬ 
sands of others. The gold hunters, Indian fight¬ 
ers, stage drivers, trail drivers, and fur trappers 
have long been gone, and the wilderness they 
pioneered is fenced and filled with towns, but 
they left brave names—Trail City, Warner’s 
Ranch, Cripple Creek, Eagle Ford, Tombstone, 
Horsehead Crossing, Skeleton Mesa, Kit Car- 
son, and Council Grove—to call up a dramatic 
231 


On the Open Range 


history. Many of the tales associated with 
place names are based on fact; in others, fancy 
runs unbridled. 

A little creek west from San Antonio, Texas, 
is called Pipe Creek. The explanation is that 
one day while two frontiersmen were riding in 
the country, they discovered a band of savage 
warriors racing towards them. They set spurs 
to their horses. One of them was smoking a 
pipe. Just as he crossed a little unnamed creek, 
he dropped the pipe. He halted to pick it up. 
His companion yelled for him to come on. 
“No,” he yelled back, “I’m going to get my 
pipe.” He got it, and both the men escaped. 
Immediately almost the little creek became 
known as Pipe Creek. This illustrates place 
name stories based on fact. 

More than one watercourse bears the name of 
Wichita, named for the Wichita tribe of In¬ 
dians. A frequently told story as to how the 
Wichita River of Texas got its name runs like 
this. One time while some Indians were moving 
across the country, they came to a swollen stream 
of water. There were women and children in 
the company, and the ponies were loaded with 
such goods as the wandering savages possessed. 
Therefore they did not plunge directly into the 
stream as warriors out after scalps or on a horse¬ 
stealing expedition might have plunged. They 
232 


Stories that Names Tell 


halted to investigate the depth of the water be¬ 
fore risking in it their lives and property. A 
young woman volunteered to wade in. 

“Ankle deep,” she said, as she put her foot 
into the margin. “Knee deep,” she called as she 
stepped farther out. Then it was “Hip deep.” 
Presently she got into the deepest part of the 
water. “Wichita, wichita, wichita,” she kept 
saying, wichita being her word for “waist deep.” 
Ever afterwards the stream was known as the 
Wichita. The story exemplifies a purely fanci¬ 
ful explanation of a place name; it is not based 
on fact. The same story is told about the 
Washita River in Oklahoma and the Wakarusa 
—often called to the Lawrence River—in Kan¬ 
sas. 


The River of Lost Souls 

Running through Trinidad, Colorado, to join 
the great Arkansas River to the north, is a 
stream that bears indiscriminately three names: 
El Rio de las Animas, Purgatoire, and Picket 
Wire. Three hundred years and more ago, so 
the tale goes, before there was a United States 
and while Spain owned Florida and all the ter¬ 
ritory westward clear to the Pacific Ocean, an 
expedition was fitted out in Santa Fe with 
orders to explore a route to Saint Augustine, 
233 


On the Open Range 


Florida. The commander of the expedition de¬ 
cided to seek a northern route and, after pro¬ 
ceeding some distance, made camp for the winter 
at what is now Trinidad. The stream by which 
he camped had an Indian name no longer re¬ 
membered. 

With the coming of spring grass, the Span¬ 
iards followed down this stream, sending word 
of their plans back to Santa Fe. That was the 
last ever heard of the expedition. Not even a 
whisper ever floated back to explain their fate. 
And then the name of the stream down which 
they disappeared was called El Rio de las 
Animas, later shortened into Las Animas, which 
means, loosely translated, The River of Lost 
Souls. 

In time French traders and trappers came 
into the country. They did not change the 
name of the river, but they translated it into 
their own tongue, and so Las Animas became 
also Purgatoire (Purgatory, where lost souls 
go). Both as Las Animas and Purgatoire the 
stream ran for a long time. Then came the 
mountain men from Missouri and bull-whackers 
with cargoes for Santa Fe. These English- 
speaking men accepted the French name all 
right, but they could not or would not twist their 
tongues to give it the correct pronunciation. 
Purgatoire in their mouths became Picket Wire. 

234 


Stories that Names Tell 

Today the Mexicans of Colorado and New Mex¬ 
ico call the stream Las Animas; the maps print 
it as Purgatoire; but for many town people as 
well as for farmers and ranchers it is plain 
Picket Wire. 

The Spanish-speaking people are a wonderful 
people for converting some incident into a name. 
In the year 1837 a California pioneer named 
John Marsh was ascending the Sacramento 
River with a party of Spaniards. They came to 
the mouth of an unknown tributary and turned 
up it to explore. After a while they came to a 
spot covered with feathers. From this circum¬ 
stance they christened the stream Rio de las 
Plumas. Pluma means feather, and Feather 
River is still the name of a tributary to the 
Sacramento. 

On a ranch where Mexicans work many in¬ 
significant hills, trails, draws, and other topo¬ 
graphic features are likely to have names. I 
once knew a Mexican cook who had orders from 
his boss to drive the chuck wagon ten miles and 
prepare dinner on a certain hill. After he had 
driven that distance, unhitched his horses, made 
a fire, and put on the Dutch oven in which to 
bake bread, he found that he had forgotten the 
flour. Vaqueros at once named the place Flour 
Hill (Loma de Harina), and Flour Hill it still 
is. On this same ranch some Mexicans were 
285 


On the Open Range 


told to work three days with mules and scrapers 
making a dam for holding water on a dry 
arroyo. After they had finished the “tank,” 
one of them said: “This is the Tank of Three 
Days (La Presa de Tres Dias)Thus names 
originate in the Spanish Southwest. Another 
tank on this ranch is called Mule Tank (La 
Presa de la Mula) because a mule staked near 
it sat back on the rope one night and crippled 
itself. 

Los Brazos de Dios 

The word brazo is Spanish for arm, and one 
of the most important rivers in Texas is called 
Los Brazos de Dios—The Arms of God. That 
is indeed a strange name, and it is no wonder 
that when the first English-speaking colony in 
Texas settled on the Brazos River, the name 
made them ask questions. The looms of folk 
imagination wove many stories to answer. I 
shall tell one of them as it came to me from a 
treasure hunter. It came to him from a ranch¬ 
man; and it came to the ranchman from an old, 
old Mexican who was traveling through the 
country in a rickety cart drawn by two burros. 
That is the way legends come down. 

The old Mexican became very ill and the 
ranchman befriended him. After he was re¬ 
stored to health, he said: “Senor, I have no 
236 


Stories that Names Tell 

money with which to pay you for your kindness, 
but I have a map here that may be worth some¬ 
thing, and I will tell you its history .” 1 The tale 
he told went something like this. 

Long, long ago the Spaniards had a fort and 
a mission on the San Saba River, and in that re¬ 
gion they worked rich mines. After they had 
been working a long time and had taken out 
much silver, a terrible drouth came. For two 
years it did not rain. All the buffaloes and deer 
left the country, and there was nothing for the 
horses and mules and burros to eat but brush. 
Then the enslaved Indians who worked in the 
mines ran away. The drouth was over the 
whole land, and the little Spanish colony lost 
all communication with their source of supplies. 
Every new moon they hoped for rain, but no 
rain came. 

At last the beautiful San Saba springs ceased 
to flow, the holes in the river bed began to dry 
up, and it was evident to all that in order to es¬ 
cape perishing of thirst they must go to water 
somewhere. The Spaniards knew that the land 
west and south towards Mexico was even more 
thirsty than their own. But they had heard of 
a great river to the east called by the Indians 
Tokonhono. They had heard that a village of 

1 The story connects with the legend of the Lost San Saba, 
or Lost Bowie, Mine. 


237 


On the Open Range 


Waco Indians stood on the banks of this river— 
and they had heard truth, for the city of Waco 
now marks the site of that village of the Waco 
(or Hueco) Indians. 

They resolved to go to the Tokonhono. Ac¬ 
cordingly, they packed their burros with the 
skins that served them for bedding, the earthen 
pots in which they cooked, and the small amount 
of dried meat and mesquite beans that they had 
to eat. Also they packed many burros with 
silver bullion. Then they turned eastward, not 
a human being remaining. 

At the Llano (Prairie) River, usually so full 
and swift, they found a dry bed. The Colorado 
(Red) River was as dry as the top of a rock. 
At Lampasas (Water Lilies) Springs they 
found a little putrid water, a great deal of mud, 
and dead buffaloes covering the ground. Here 
they filled their waterskins—bags made by skin¬ 
ning a deer or some other animal without split¬ 
ting the hide and then, flesh side out, tying up all 
holes. 

Now the beasts of burden began to break 
down. To carry the silver bullion farther was 
impossible, and it was buried. All strength must 
be conserved for carrying the water-skins and 
the ever weakening people. The water, half of 
it mud, was soon used up. The cavalcade 
crept on eastward, thinking only of water. 

238 



«_ an d because this river has saved us, it shall henceforth be 
called Los Brazos de Dios ”—The Arms of God. 


239 





















Ox the Open Range 


They left a trail marked by dead animals 
and here and there a dead man. But at 
last a remnant of the Spaniards arrived at the 
village of the Wacos. And there they found a 
river flowing fresh and clear. 

All plunged in to drink, and when the men 
had drunk and their beasts had drunk, they knelt 
down at the edge of the water to give God 
thanks. And the good padre (priest) with them 
stretched out his hands over the stream and 
blessed it and said: “This river shall no longer 
be called the Tokonhono, but because it has 
saved us, it shall henceforth be called Los Brazos 
de Dios”—the Arms of God. 

How the drouth lasted on for other seasons, 
how Comanches destroyed the Spaniards who 
had escaped the drouth, and how the bullion they 
buried has never been found, need not be told 
here. This is the legend of how the Brazos River 
—Los Brazos de Dios—received its name. 

Stampede Mesa 2 

The story of how Stampede Mesa got its 
name is not only about a place; it is also about 

2 “The Legend of Stampede Mesa” was written by John 
Craddock for Legends of Texas , published by the Texas Folk- 
Lore Society, Austin, Texas, 1924, and is here used by per¬ 
mission. 


240 


Stories that Names Tell 

one of the most awesome and mysterious phe¬ 
nomena of nature—the stampede. 

Cattle may stampede at the sudden appear¬ 
ance in the night of a man or a dog or anything 
else. They may stampede from terror at light¬ 
ning. They may stampede because of the smell 
of a polecat, an Indian, or something else not 
familiar. They may stampede at the sound of a 
horse shaking an empty saddle, or a sudden yell, 
or the click of a gate, or nearly any other sound 
but the soothing song and whistle of a cowboy. 
A wood rat flipping his tail about the nose of a 
sleeping steer has started more than one stam¬ 
pede. There are a thousand things to make a 
herd of cattle stampede in the night. Sometimes 
cowboys know by the nervous actions of cattle 
that they are going to stampede. Often the 
worst stampedes are never explained. 

A thousand cattle are spread out asleep on 
the ground. In an instant they are all on their 
feet. Then with click of hoofs, clack of horns, 
and a terrible roar made as they pound the 
earth, they are in a wild run. They may veer 
from a bluff, but if they are sufficiently terrified 
they will go on over. It is the cowboy’s business 
to turn the herd so that the leaders will circle 
about and follow the rear cattle, making what is 
called a “mill.” Sometimes the leaders will not 
turn. Then if the cowboy’s horse falls, leaving 
241 


On the Open Range 


him in the path of the maddened animals or if 
in the darkness he plunges off some cliff, the re¬ 
sult is likely to be death. It is no wonder that 
there are many stories about stampedes. 

Mesa means table . A mesa is a table-like 
structure of land, a kind of plateau, rising 
sharply above adjacent territory. Stampede 
Mesa stands wedged between the forks of Blanco 
Canyon on the plains of Texas. The main 
stream skirts it on the west; to the south the 
bluffs of the mesa drop a sheer hundred feet 
down into the rocks of McNeil Branch. The 
two hundred acre top of the mesa is too rocky 
ever to be plowed into a field, but it is covered 
with enough soil to afford grass. The old 
Maclvenzie Trail leading into New Mexico used 
to pass by Stampede Mesa. 

Cowmen who followed this trail and knew the 
range were agreed that a better place to hold a 
herd could not be found. Cattle could be 
watered at the stream late in the evening, drifted 
up the gentle slope on one side of the mesa, 
grazed a while, and then be bedded down against 
the bluffs. The steep bluffs on the south side 
made a natural barrier so that the night guard 
could be reduced by half. In the morning there 
was water at hand before the drive was resumed. 
For years the mesa had no name. Then there 
came a time when its name was known far and 
242 


Stories that Names Tell 

wide and hardly a trail boss would attempt to 
hold his herd on Stampede Mesa. 

Early in the fall of ’89 an old cowman named 
Sawyer came through the Blanco Canyon coun¬ 
try with a trail herd of fifteen hundred head of 
steers. Along in the afternoon as he was driving 
across Dockum Flats, some six or seven miles 
east of the mesa, his herd strung out in a long, 
narrow ribbon, several cows belonging to a 
nester came bawling among the steers. Closely 
following them, came the nester himself, de¬ 
manding that his cattle be cut out immediately. 

Old Sawyer bore the reputation of being “as 
hard as nails. ,, He was driving short of hands; 
he had come far; his steers were gaunt and some 
of them were sore-footed. He did not want them 
“ginned about” any more than was necessary. 
He bluntly told the nester that he could not cut 
the cows out until the herd had watered. 

The nester was pretty “nervy,” and, seeing 
that his little stock of cattle was being driven 
off, he flared up and told Sawyer that if his cows 
were not dropped out of the herd before dark 
he would stampede it. 

At this Sawyer gave a kind of dry laugh, put 
his hand on his six-shooter, and told the nester 
to “vamoose.” 

Nightfall found the herd straggling up the 
east slope of the mesa. The cows were still 
243 


On the Open Range 


among the steers. The tired cattle, loggy with 
the water they had drunk, soon bedded down— 
not far from the bluff on the south side. Only 
two men were on herd. The cattle were so 
peaceful that the guard ceased to be watchful, 
though there was no moon and the night was 
dark. 

But that peace was not to last. True to his 
threat, the nester, approaching from the north 
side, slipped past the watch about midnight, 
flapped his slicker a few times, and with a yell 
emptied his six-shooter. He did his work well. 
The cattle broke away absolutely frantic. All 
of them except about three hundred head stam¬ 
peded over the jagged bluffs, and both the night- 
herders, caught by the cattle they were tr}dng 
to circle, went with them. 

The noise aroused the men in camp, and, 
springing on their night horses, which were al¬ 
ways kept saddled, they came, but too late to 
be of any use. Sawyer said little. At daybreak 
he sent out all hands with orders to bring the 
nester in alive, horse and all. The orders were 
carried out, and when the men rode up on the 
mesa with their prisoner, Sawyer was waiting. 

Dismounting, he took a rawhide lariat, tied 
the nester on his horse, blindfolded the horse 
with a bandana handkerchief, and then, seizing 
him by the bit, backed him off the bluff. There 
244 


Stories that Names Tell 


were plenty of hands to drive Sawyer’s herd 
now. Somewhere on the “lone prairie” they 
buried, with blankets for winding-sheets, their 
comrades and drov£ on. They left the nester 
to rot with the piles of dead steers among the 
rocks at the foot of Stampede Mesa. It had a 
name now. 

After that, so they say, every herd held on 
Stampede Mesa was sure to stampede before the 
night was out. Cowboys on guard could hear 
the nester calling cows in long and mournful 
notes. And as the cattle ran, more than one 
cowboy rushing after them saw dim in the dark¬ 
ness a man lashed on a blindfolded horse break¬ 
ing for the bluff. Phantom-like things would 
come softly in among the cattle to terrify them. 
Some said the things were tumble-weeds driven 
by the wind; others said they were ghosts of 
stampeded cattle. 

Some of those stampedes before the mesa 
came to be avoided are remembered yet. 

“It was in the fall of 1900,” Poncho Burrall 
used to narrate. “The Crosby country was jest 
beginning to settle up thick. I was working for 
old man Jeff Iviester’s outfit, helping take a herd 
through to New Mexico. We’d been on the trail 
some ten days, I guess, when we came to a ranch 
in a valley down on the Salt Fork. Kiester said 
a friend of his lived there, and he rode off. 

245 


On the Open Range 


After a while two boys loped up and told us 
they’d hold the cattle while the outfit went down 
to the ranch for dinner. As we didn’t have any¬ 
thing but a pack outfit, we were glad of the 
chance at some ranch cooking. 

“Well, when we pulled up at the house, Kiester 
and an old man were sitting under a brush arbor 
that represented the front gallery. First thing 
I noticed about the old man was that one of his 
arms was only about two-thirds as long as the 
other, and that he had to put it where he wanted 
it with the other hand. We met him and sat 
down to wait for dinner, not saying much but 
listening a-plenty. 

“ ‘You’ll find plenty of good places to hold 
your cattle nights, Jeff,’ said the old man. ‘But 
about the third night out you’ll be some’ers 
near Stampede Mesa. Don’t you try to hold 
’em thar.’ 

“ ‘I’m aiming to hold ’em right there, Bill/ 
said Iviester. 

“‘Now, Jeff, you ain’t fergot that stampede 
in ’91, have you? Well, maybe you have, but 
I haven’t. I carry a leetle souvenir that won’t 
let me ferget. There were phantom steers in 
that herd that night. You recollect as how our 
cows went over the bluff, Jeff? I must ’a’ been 
a sight when you all found me. I hain’t moved 
this old arm since.’ 


246 


Stories that Names Tell 

“Well, the wife called dinner just then, and , 
the old man got strung out on something else, 
but that stampede business jest stuck in my 
mind. 

“Along late in the evening about three days 
after that, old Iviester and I were riding the 
drag when he put down the calf he’d been a- 
carrying in front of his saddle, and said, 4 ’Tain’t 
fer now, little feller, and you kin walk. We’re 
camping on Stampede Mesa, as they call it.’ 

“ T guess you noticed that feller’s arm, back 
there in the valley,’ said Iviester, jerking his 
hand back toward the way we had come. 

“ ‘Yes,’ says I, waiting fer him to go on. 

“ ‘Well, he got it up there on the south side 
of that mesa. His hoss went plumb crazy. 
Bill’s always said there were ghost steers in the 
herd that night. I think I seen ’em too. They 
jest came a-sailing through the other cattle and 
right past my horse. I don’t believe in hants, 
but it was scary.’ 

“Well, Iviester didn’t say any more on the 
subject, and by dark we had the herd watered 
and up on top of the mesa. A feller named Bob 
Hermes and me took first guard that night, and 
every critter in the bunch stretched out on the 
ground. 

“Somehow I could not get that stampede talk 
out of my head. Every time a cow swallered her 
247 


On the Open Range 


cud I thought something was going to happen. 
It was a mixed lot of stuff, and they lay as quiet 
as a bunch of dead sheep. Everything got so 
still I could hear my pardner’s saddle creak, 
away off to one side. The moon set, and it got 
darker. 

“Just about then something passed me. It 
looked like a man on a horse, only it jest 
seemed to sorter float along. Then there was a 
roar, and the whole herd was stampeding 
straight fer the bluffs. I rode in front of one 
critter-like, and it jest passed right on, kinder 
floating in a way I can’t describe. Then some 
old cow bellered and we milled ’em easy. But 
they wouldn’t bed down again that night, and it 
took every man to hold ’em.” 

Stampede Mesa bought its name fair, and no 
one who has heard the story can look at it, 
branded by the scar of the old MacKenzie Trail, 
without a strange emotion. 


248 


Chapter XIII 


BURIED TREASURE 

Every part of the civilized world almost has 
its stories of buried treasure. In Spain, as any 
one who has read Washington Irving’s delight¬ 
ful Alhambra knows, it is Moorish treasures that 
the people look for and talk about. Along the 
coasts of Florida* and Louisiana, it is pirate 
treasure. On the old trails leading eastward 
from California legend has placed many and 
many a bag of gold dust left by the miners who 
had made their stake and were coming back 
home. The plantation homes of the Old South 
are sites for innumerable stories of coin and plate 
hidden by wealthy planters who never returned 
from the Civil War to recover their riches. There 
are tales of money buried by ranchers in cow 
horns and under corral fences. Freighters on 
the Sante Fe and Chihuahua trails used to hide 
gold doubloons in the axles of their great carts 
and then in battle with Indians either be killed 
or driven away, leaving the carts behind. The 
outlaws of Oklahoma, the bandits of the Mexican 
border, and the “road agents” who robbed stages 
249 


On the Open Range 


from the Black Hills to Tombstone all left, in 
legend at least, hoards of buried loot. But 
in the vast region of the United States once 
owned by Spain a majority of the lost treasures 
and also innumerable lost mines are connected 
with Spaniards and Mexicans. All these tales 
are a part of the heritage of the land. 

The Mezcla Man 

A very long time ago all the land down the 
Nueces River was stocked with nothing but 
sheep. It was full of flocks kept by pastor es 
(shepherds) and owned by Spanish rancheros 
who were very, very rich. There were no banks 
in the country then, you know, and so when the 
ranchmen sold their wool and sheep, they 
brought the money home to keep. Often they 
buried it in the floors of their houses, for all the 
floors were made out of dirt. Sometimes they 
hid the gold in their beds or put it in a secret 
hole in the thick walls of rock or adobe. There 
were many places to hide gold. 

And there were robbers, too, and when these 
robbers came to the house of a ranchero, they 
would dig up the floor, tear down the walls, 
scatter the bedding about, and look in all sorts 
of places for the money. 

But there was one ranchero who had more 
250 


Buried Treasure 


sheep and more wool and more pastores working 
for him than anybody else. Of course he had 
more gold also, and he was very cunning. He 
lived in those high hills of the Casa Blanca coun¬ 
try west of San Diego. 

One time after he had sold several thousand 
sheep and many cart loads of wool, he brought 
home more gold than he had ever had before. 
But now instead of hiding it in his house, he 
carried it to the top of the highest hill on his 
ranch. On top of this hill was a thicket of black 
chaparral that grew so dense a javelina could 
hardly squeeze through it. 

The cunning old ranchero worked his way 
into the middle of the thicket. And right there 
he made a great big man out of mud cement— 
the stuff we call mezcla —and sticks to support 
the legs and neck and arms. This mezcla man 
was nearly as big as a giant, and he was just as 
natural as a picture. His head was thrown 
back, and his mouth was wide open. He stood 
with his arms stretched out to the east and the 
west, and across his chest was this writing: 

DIG OUT TO THE EAST AND THE WEST 
THE WAY MY HANDS ARE POINTING 
AND YOU WILL FIND 
THE GOLD 

Oh, but this mezcla man was strange-looking, 
251 


On the Open Range 


and his stomach was so big that anybody who 
looked at him would have to laugh. 

Well, after the old ranchero had finished 
making the mezcla man there in the thicket and 
had written directions on his breast about find¬ 
ing the gold, he went back home. Sure enough, 
before long the robbers came. They knew that 
he had more riches than anyone else and they 
killed him. Then they went into his house and 
dug up the floor. They could not find any gold 
in the dirt, though, and next they tore into the 
walls and cut open the beds and broke into 
everything that might hide the money. They 
could not find it, but they knew it was some¬ 
where. They were as cunning as the old ranch¬ 
ero himself, and so they began riding around and 
around, looking everywhere for a sign of the 
great treasure. 

After a while they rode to the top of the high, 
high hill, and there they saw where somebody 
had gone into the thicket of black chaparral. 
They went in quickly, and right in the middle 
of the brush they came upon the mezcla man 
with those words on his breast: “Dig out to 
the east and the west the way my hands are 
pointing, and you will find the gold.” 

Oh, the robbers had much joy then! Quickly 
they dug under the hands of the mezcla man. 
They found nothing. They did not know how 
252 


Buried Treasure 


far out to dig, and so they ran east and west the 
way the hands pointed, looking for the right kind 
of places. They had to work in a hurry, for 
they knew that honest people would soon find 
the murdered ranchero and the torn-up house 
and begin trailing them down. Before long they 
heard horses galloping hot on their trail. They 
had to fly, and so they left the country without 
having found the gold. 

When the ranch people who were after the 
robbers came to the thicket and saw the strange 
mezcla man and read that writing on his breast, 
they forgot all about capturing the bandits. 
They thought only of finding the gold. There 
was nobody after them, and so they could dig as 
deep and as far out as they wanted to. They 
would sight along the mezcla man’s shoulders 
and along his arms and out his fore-finger and 
out his middle finger and out his little finger, 
trying, trying to locate the right place on the 
ground to dig for the gold. They even sighted 
out to a hill five miles away and dug a hole there. 
They cut paths through the brush east and west. 
But after they had dug and dug and found 
nothing, they became disgusted and quit. 

Then the pastores began coming up to the hill 
and digging. Each pastor had a flock of sheep 
and with them a shepherd dog. The way to train 
a dog to tend to sheep is to take him when he is 
253 


On the Open Range 


a puppy and let him suck a ewe. When he grows 
up, he thinks he is a sheep and will not let a 
coyote or anything else bother his kinspeople. 
Leaving their dogs to care for the sheep, the 
pastores would dig all day long. They dug new 
holes and they dug the old holes deeper. But 
they did not find anything, and after a while 
they became tired and disgusted and quit coming 
to the high hill to dig. 

Only one old pastor did not quit. He was 
more cunning and had more knowledge than any 
of the other pastores. He knew what it meant 
when the coyotes howled on top of the hills after 
sunup instead of in the valleys before daybreak. 
He knew what it meant when the bullbats were 
thick in the evening air. He knew what it meant 
when rattlesnakes crawled around in the middle 
of a hot summer’s day instead of remaining 
asleep in the shade of bushes. He said that when 
a paisano (or road-runner) stopped suddenly 
while running down a trail, stood on one leg, and 
bowed his head, he was praying. He could make 
better medicines than anybody else out of the 
leaves of the gray cenizo plant, the bark of the 
huisache tree, and the roots of the leather weed. 
He could read in the stars and also he could read 
in a book. Oh, this old pastor was very, very 
wise. 

So he kept on coming to that high hill and 
254 


Buried Treasure 


digging. Every morning he would put his bottle 
of water down at the mezcla man’s feet, take his 
grubbing hoe and spade, and then for hours dig, 
dig, dig. He made some of the old holes deeper 
and he put down new holes. 

One hot day after he had been working very 
hard and was very thirsty and tired, he came in 
from his digging to drink from the bottle. He 
took the stopper made out of shucks from its 
mouth and, while his head was raised up to re¬ 
ceive the water, his eyes fell again on the writing 
upon the mezcla man’s breast. He had read it 
many times, but he read it again out loud: “Dig 
out to the east and the west the way my hands are 
pointing and you will find the gold.” 

After he had done drinking, the pastor re¬ 
garded the writing for a long time. He read it 
again, over and over. At last he said, speak¬ 
ing to the man of mud and sticks in front of 
him: 

“Why, the robbers came here and found you 
and read this writing and dug out to the east and 
the west, and they did not find any gold. Then 
all the rich and important rancheros in the coun¬ 
try came, and they dug out to the east and west, 
and they did not find any gold. Then after they 
quit, the yastores came and dug more holes and 
made the old holes deeper. But they did not 
fnd any gold. And I! Well, here I have been 
255 


On the Open Range 


digging my arms off for over a year, and I have 
never found so much as a copper centavo . 

“Why, you are just an old billy goat of a liar! 
I’ll teach you right now to quit lying to honest 
people!” 

The 'pastor was very angry. He seized his 
spade and hacked off the head of that mezcla 
man with its wide-open mouth. Then he 
chopped off the right arm, which pointed to the 
east, and then the left arm, which pointed to the 
west. And then, mow! he came with all his 
might down into the mezcla man’s enormous 
stomach. 

And when he did, the gold coins and some 
silver coins too just poured out on the ground. 
They were so heavy that the pastor could not 
carry them all. You see, the cunning old ranch- 
ero had built the man to hold plenty and then 
he had fed him through his open mouth until he 
was full. 

This is the story that a Mexican vaquero 
named Elojio told to me down in the Nueces 
River country of Southwest Texas, not far from 
the high hills of the Casa Blanca. 

When he had finished, I asked, “And what did 
the pastor do with so much money, Elojio?” 

“Oh, he gave his master some of it, and he kept 
the rest, and he never had to herd sheep any 
256 



The 'pastor read the writing on the mezcla man’s breast again. 


257 





















On the Open Range 


more. He went back on the other side of the 
Rio Grande into his own country, and there he 
lived muy contento (very contented) all the rest 
of his life.” 


The Rider oe Loma Escondida 1 

‘‘Boys, every time I camp at this crossing, I 
think of the way Jeff Cassidy got waylaid and 
murdered between here and Loma Escondida.” 

The speaker was Captain Crouch. He was 
with his cow outfit at the old Presidio Crossing 
on the Leona River near the border. Supper 
was over. 

“Yes,” Captain Crouch went on, “that was a 
long time ago, and tough hombres in this coun¬ 
try were thicker than pigs in the ’tater patch. 
Horse thieves were so bad that a man could 
hardly keep a gentle saddle horse without hiding 
him in a thicket after dark and then sleeping by 
him. Money was safer than horses, but a man 
with both a good horse and money had better be 
keerful. 

“Now about Jeff Cassidy. He represented 
the 7 D’s, a big outfit. Well, he left San ’tonio 
one day for the old IJ-Triangle Ranch below 

i This tale and also the tales in the chapter on “Lost Mines” are 
taken from Coronado’s Children, by J. Frank Dobie, published by 
the Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas. 

258 


Buried Treasure 


here to receive a herd of steers and start them 
up the trail for Kansas. As was the custom, he 
carried money in his saddle pockets to pay for 
the cattle. He had five thousand pesos, gold, the 
balance to be paid when the cattle were sold up 
north and the money brought home. 

“The second night on his ride down to receive 
the cattle Jeff slept in Frio Town. He left there 
at daylight next morning, coming this way. He 
was alone and was riding a little creamy dun 
pony that I’ll tell you about d’reckly. He had 
arrived in Frio Town after dark and somehow 
had failed to learn that the sheriff was going 
down to inspect brands on the herd, else he might 
have had company. 

“The sheriff left Frio along latish in the morn¬ 
ing, an hour or so after sunup. When he got 
about half-way between Loma Escondida and 
this crossing where we are camped, he found Jeff 
Cassidy and his horse lying in the middle of the 
road, both deader than thunder. The saddle was 
still on the horse, but the saddle pockets were 
gone. 

“The trail of the men who had done the mur¬ 
der was plain. The sheriff hit it in a high lope. 
After following it an hour or two, he struck a 
couple of cowboys who joined him, and the three 
of them overtook the murderers close to Eagle 
Pass. Everybody in the country knew those Mule- 
259 


On the Open Range 

shoe boys were cattle thieves, but nobody would 
have suspected them of killing a man in cold blood 
as they had killed Jeff Cassidy. The case was as 
plain as daylight, and the Muleshoe brothers 
owned up. Still they did not have any of the gold 
with them or the saddle pockets either. Further¬ 
more, neither Jim nor Tom Muleshoe could be 
forced to tell where the stuff was. They were 
hanged right off, no court trial being necessary, 
and- 

But at this point the Captain’s narrative was 
interrupted by an announcement from the camp 
cook, Alfredo, that he was out of coffee. A cow 
camp without coffee is nearly as bad off as one 
without horses. 

Alfredo was newly hired, and Captain Crouch 
did not fail to express his opinion of a cook who 
would leave headquarters without a full supply 
of coffee and then not say anything about the 
shortage until it was nearly time to cook break¬ 
fast. Alfredo explained that he had carefully 
put coffee in a big can but that he had made a 
mistake and loaded on the wagon a similar can 
containing frijoles (dried beans). But the ex¬ 
planation did not remedy the lack of coffee. 

“Well,” the Captain concluded, “there’s just 
one thing to do, and that’s for somebody to ride 
to Charlie Trebes’s commissary and get a sack 
of coffee.” 


260 



Buried Treasure 

It was ten miles to the Trebes ranch. Twenty 
miles on horseback will not leave the rider much 
of a summer’s night for sleeping. None of the 
hands said anything. It was not for them to say. 

Otis Coggins, who had been working on the 
Crouch ranch since boyhood, was patching a stir¬ 
rup-leather. He was a tall, swarthy man under 
thirty. 

“Otis,” the Captain went on, “I reckon you’re 
the man to go for the coffee. You know old 
man Trebes better than anybody else does, and 
if you get back here by breakfast time, you can 
stay in camp and sleep all morning. You had 
better get about ten pounds, I guess.” 

“All right,” said Otis. 

Then, turning to a Mexican, Otis ordered, 
“Go get me that Trigueno horse. It’s lucky I 
staked him.” 

“I guess I taught you never to be caught 
afoot,” remarked Captain Crouch. “They say 
these days that everybody should carry life insur¬ 
ance. That’s all right, but for a man on a ranch 
a good horse ready to ride at any hour is more 
necessary than life insurance. That reminds 


“But Captain,” Otis broke in, still mending 
on his saddle, “don’t you suppose those Mule- 
shoe boys must have buried that five thousand 
dollars in gold close to where they killed Jeff 
261 



On the Open Range 


Cassidy? They aimed to make use of it some 
day, that’s certain.” 

“Yes, I guess they hid it somewhere,” Captain 
Crouch agreed, his mind brought back to the 
story he had been telling when the cook inter¬ 
rupted him. “I don’t know as anybody’s ever 
looked for it much. There never was anything 
that hurt me more than Jeff’s death. He and 
me had been side partners—reg’lar yoke mates, 
you might say—for years. We broke enough 
horses together to furnish the biggest cow outfit 
that ever worked cows. 

“There were still some mustangs in the coun¬ 
try, and one day we took after a little bunch that 
were too full of water to run fast and roped us 
one apiece. Mine was a choice black filly. I 
broke her neck a-trying to get the saddle on her. 
Jeff’s was a creamy dun stallion with a black 
stripe down his back about the width of your 
palm—a bayo coyote, as the Mexicans call a 
horse of that color. He was all life and bottom 
and as smart as a whip. He was as quick as 
powder and made the prize cutting horse of the 
country. Jeff got so he didn’t want to ride any¬ 
thing else. He was riding him when he was 
killed. I always figured that one of those Mule- 
shoe boys made a misshot and killed the horse 
accidentally. They would have been glad to take 
him as well as the gold.” 

262 


Buried Treasure 


The Mexican arrived with Otis’s horse. The 
saddle was thrown on him, and a sack for the 
coffee was tied on the saddle. With an adios the 
rider was off. 

Otis Coggins was a silent kind of man. He 
liked to be alone. His route lay through a vast 
flat country of mesquite, catclaw, huajillo, cha- 
pote, prickly pear, and other kinds of brush com¬ 
mon to Southwest Texas. The only break on 
the plain that his brush-lined road penetrated was 
a solitary hill known far and wide as Loma Es- 
condida. It is escondida —hidden—because the 
brush is so high and thick around it that a rider 
cannot see it until he is almost upon it. 

The moon was full; as usual the sky was flaw¬ 
lessly clean; one might have read ordinary print 
in the moonlight. As he approached Loma Es¬ 
condida, not a sound but the pad of his horse’s 
hoofs and the squeak of saddle leather breaking 
the silence, Otis’Coggins noticed an object, or, 
rather, two objects, in the road some distance 
ahead of him. They were partly in the shadow 
of high brush, and at first he took them to be a 
cow and calf. Cattle in a brush country often 
bed down in open roads. But presently Otis saw 
that the larger of the objects was a horse and 
that the lesser was a man apparently humped 
over on the ground. The man soon straightened, 
mounted, and started up the hill ahead of Otis. 

263 


On the Open Range 


Now, the road by Loma Escondida was a pri¬ 
vate ranch road. It was Otis’s business to inves¬ 
tigate any man he saw riding around in his em¬ 
ployer’s pasture at night. He hailed the rider. 
There was no response. He set spurs to his 
horse to overtake the trespasser, and, without 
hard running, was soon close upon him. He saw 
—saw plainly—that the horse ahead was dun- 
colored with a black stripe down his back. 

“He’s a bayo coyote , like Jeff Cassidy’s mus¬ 
tang,” Otis reflected. 

Near the top of the hill he was actually by the 
stranger’s side; neither spoke a word, and Otis 
could not get a view of the rider’s face. Then 
suddenly the stranger pulled out of the road 
into some half-open ground and made straight 
for a stark, dead mesquite tree, the trunk of 
which was exceptionally large. Otis knew that 
tree; he recalled how late one evening while he 
was driving a bunch of saddle horses over Loma 
Escondida, something—he did not see what— 
jumped out of this very tree and stampeded the 
remuda so that they ran two miles before he 
could get around them. 

He saw something now that he did not believe. 
He saw horse and rider head into the tree— 
straight into it—and disappear. The ground be¬ 
yond was open enough that anything crossing it 
would have been plainly visible. 

264 


Buried Treasure 


He pulled up his horse and looked, just 
looked. Like most other range men, he had a 
prosaic head that absolutely refused to harbor 
ghosts and other such superstitions common 
among the Mexicans. He guessed maybe he had 
been half asleep and did not know it. Yet he 
could not have been mistaken about seeing the 
man down by his horse back in the road, the man 
mounting and riding off, the dun horse with a 
black stripe down his back. All the details were 
clear. 

He rode on now to get the coffee, got it, an¬ 
swered a few questions about the cow work, and 
started back. 

He rode absorbed in contemplation of the 
strange rider and horse. He determined to in¬ 
vestigate the mesquite tree into which they had 
vanished. Once he turned in his saddle to look 
behind him, and down a straight stretch of the 
road saw a coyote following. Off in the brush he 
heard now and then the lonely wail of other coy¬ 
otes; he liked to hear them. 

True to its name, Loma Escondida did not re¬ 
veal itself until he was at it, and then Otis saw 
something that made him know he had not 
dreamed the rider on the bayo coyote. There the 
rider was, trotting his horse leisurely up the hill, 
going in the direction opposite that in which he had 
been going when seen earlier in the night. Otis 
265 


On the Open Range 


reined up. He heard distinctly the sound of the 
dun’s hoofs on the dry, hard ground. Those very 
material sounds made him realize that some trick 
had been played on him, and he resolved to end 
the mystery. He knew that his Trigueno horse 
could put up a hot race, even if the race led clear 
to camp on the Leona; and if it came to running 
in the brush, he wore his regular protection of 
ducking jacket and leather leggins and he con¬ 
sidered himself second to no man in skill as a 
“brush popper.” 

“Vamonos!” (Let’s go!) And Otis awak¬ 
ened his horse with both spurs. 

The stranger was a full hundred yards ahead, 
up the hill. For a minute he continued the 
leisurely trot, but when Otis had lessened the in¬ 
terval by half he saw the man ahead of him strike 
into a run. Now the squat top of the hill was 
reached; Otis was gaining. He was not more 
than twenty yards behind. They were coming 
to the half-opening into which the mysterious 
rider had before turned out of the road. Here 
he suddenly turned again. Otis was not sur¬ 
prised. In less time than it takes to draw a six- 
shooter, he had the horn string around his rope 
loose and a loop shaken out. 

“Now,” he yelled, “if I can’t catch you, I’ll 
rope you.” 

But he was too late. Just as he prepared to 
266 


Buried Treasure 


cast his loop, the pursued rider and horse disap¬ 
peared into the dead mesquite. There was no 
sound of impact. Otis himself dodged under a 
low-hanging limb of the old tree so as to be upon 
the tricky stranger on the other side. On the 
other side was nothing but bush, moonlight, va¬ 
cancy, and silence. 

Otis got down and led his horse up to the old 
mesquite. The first episode had been a surprise. 
The second, with every sense of the observer alert 
and expectant, was overwhelming. 

Otis proceeded at once to give the tree a thor¬ 
ough examination. First he bent over to look at 
the ground around it. The moon, still high, re¬ 
vealed nothing but his own horse’s tracks. The 
tree itself, though dead, was not rotten. How¬ 
ever, his eye caught a long groove in it. He felt 
the groove with his hands. It had been made 
with an axe long ago. 

With face averted, he was slowly circling the 
old trrfnk when his boot caught on a flat rock. 
It was in shadow, and he lit a match to examine 
more closely for other marks on that side of the 
tree. Glancing down, he noticed a dull glint of 
metal. He picked it up, lit another match; it 
was a twenty-dollar gold piece. 

If there was one coin, there might be others. 
In order to clear the ground for closer inspec¬ 
tion, Otis lifted the rock out of place. He 
267 


On the Open Range 


hardly needed the light of a match to see what 
now lay exposed. It was a pair of old saddle 
pockets. They were so rotten that they almost 
fell apart when he picked them up. Several 
coins fell out. 

“Jeff Cassidy’s gold right where the Muleshoe 
boys hid it!” Otis exclaimed aloud. 

He was not excited. He never got excited. 
Calmly he went to his saddle, took down the 
sack, tied the coffee into one end of it, and then 
secured his find in the other end. Counting it 
could wait. 

When he rode into camp on the Leona, Cap¬ 
tain Crouch and the cook were already up. 

“I’ve shore been wanting that coffee,” the 
Captain greeted him. “The water’s been bilin’ 
half an hour.” 

“Well, here it is,” Otis sang out, at the same 
time dismounting and untying the sack, from 
which he brought to view only a part of the con¬ 
tents. “Hurry up, Alfredo. I’d like a sip of 
coffee myself.” 


268 


Chapter XIV 


LOST MINES 

He has dreams in his eyes, 

And shoes without socks, 

And an iron skillet 

In which to melt rocks. 

But the tales he tells! 

Have you never heard 
Of the nuggets guarded 
By the dead man’s word? 

He’s traveled a many 
And many a mile 
With two little donkeys 
That never smile. 

But the tales he tells— 

Of the chest in the lake 
And the bandit’s canyon 
Called the Rattlesnake! 

Oh, the tales he tells— 

They never grow old. 

They’re partly of Spaniards 
But more about gold. 

They’ve Indians and pack-trains 
And bullion that lies 
Deep as a drouth crack— 

Or the dreams in his eyes. 

269 


On the Open Range 


Nuggets in the Sand 

Nothing in nature is more maddening than a 
summer sandstorm in the desert. The thermom¬ 
eter mounts to 110, 120, even more degrees in 
the blazing sun. Then the wind rises and begins 
shifting the dunes. It moves them fifty feet, five 
hundred feet. Above the swirling, cutting sand 
the sun becomes a dim copper disc; then there is 
no sun. The peaks of arid mountains, generally 
so clearly defined in the distance, blur out. A 
man caught in the storm cannot see his own hand. 
At one place the wind scoops out sand until 
“bottom” is reached; at another it piles up sand 
into overwhelming crests. On the grazable 
fringes of the desert the sand sometimes plays 
humorous tricks. It has covered up a windmill. 
The yarn goes that a cowboy awoke one morning 
to find his horse standing on top of a mesquite 
tree instead of under it, where he had staked him. 
But in the deadliest wastes of the desert there 
are no grazing grounds or windmills. A lizard 
does well to live there. 

Somewhere, out in the midst of the desert 
sands of Arizona, is a lost heap of gold nuggets— 
thousands, millions of them. They have been 
seen twice at least. 

One day a Mexican girl was herding goats in 
the scraggly brush along the eastern fringe of 
270 


Lost Mines 


the desert. Some of the goats had strayed con¬ 
siderably out, and it was getting along towards 
night when the girl saw that a windstorm was 
rising. She gave the customary call to start the 
goats homeward, but the strays refused to come. 
She hurried out to drive them in, but she could 
not hurry like the wind. 

She had walked less than a hundred yards 
when she became almost blinded by the driving 
sand. She lost view of the goats. Then she 
faced the teeth of the wind to make for the shel¬ 
ter of the little Mexican ranch where she lived. 
Now the sand was cutting like knives. She tried 
to bear against it, and veered. She zig-zagged. 
She could not see a foot away. She let the wind 
carry her as it would. She never knew how many 
hours she stmnbled, crawled, cried. She lost all 
sense of time, direction, purpose. 

Finally she realized that she was being swept 
away like the sand itself and that she would have 
acted more wisely if she had not attempted to 
walk in it. She knew that she was lost, and then 
she huddled down against the earth to remain 
there until the storm was over and she could get 
her bearings. Sometimes such a storm lasts for 
days, sometimes only for hours. She found her¬ 
self in what seemed a kind of depression, and 
there with back against the wind she waited. 

The wind grew stronger, if possible, and she 
271 


On* the Open Range 


felt the sands being carried away from around 
her. But she remained where she was, settling 
as the sand settled. After a time, a very long 
time, she seemed to be at the “bottom,” on solid 
ground. She could feel little rocks about her. 
There was a difference in light but not in visibil¬ 
ity between night and day; the night and half of 
a day went by, and then the wind lulled. 

The shepherd girl could see. She looked at the 
mute and unfamiliar horizon about her. She 
looked at the appalling sky. She looked at the 
ground beneath her feet. The little rocks she had 
felt were gold nuggets! Far away across the 
waste of sand was the smoke of a train. Home 
was perhaps nearer than the railroad, but the girl 
did not know where home was. She had lost all 
sense of direction and could not recognize a sin¬ 
gle landmark. She knew that if she could reach 
the railroad, the next train would stop for her. 

She gathered into her skirt as many nuggets as 
she could carry and started towards the railroad. 
Not a mark on the sand was there to go by, only 
the memory of the faint line of smoke and the 
smoky sun. She ran, she walked, she fell, she 
staggered, she crawled. She reached the raib 
road. 

When a train came, it, according to the custom 
of the desert, stopped, and the trainmen took the 
shepherd girl on board. The sight of her nug- 
272 



She never knew how many hours she stumbled, crawled, cried. 


273 





























On the Open Range 


gets drove them wild and assured her careful at¬ 
tention in the next town. The train crew quit 
their jobs and waited for her to recover so that 
she could guide them to the golden deposit. 

She recovered quickly, but the train men need 
not have waited. All she knew was the general 
direction out in the sands through which she had 
waded to reach the track. She was vague as to 
the time it had taken her to traverse the distance. 
Perhaps she had not moved in a straight line. 
There was not a mark on the horizon to go by; 
there remained not a footprint in the restless 
sands. 

The search was fruitless, and the winds came 
again, and the sands shifted back and forth in 
their way, and the Mexican shepherd girl never 
saw again the golden rocks that lie below the 
sands. 

However, tradition has it that a cowboy who 
was once trying to cross the desert came acci¬ 
dentally upon the marvelous display of gold. 
He gathered enough of the nuggets to fill his sad¬ 
dle pockets and he even removed his saddle blan¬ 
ket so that he could roll the gold up in it. He 
forgot the fearful price one may pay for gold in 
the desert. Had he taken the right direction, he 
might have ridden to water. But he forgot or 
missed directions. His horse at length sank ex¬ 
hausted, and he shot it to drink its blood, 
274 


Lost Mines 


Then the cowboy went on. He threw away 
everything that he had even to the last nugget. 
At last, as it seemed by the providence of God, 
he dragged his perishing frame to a water hole 
and to human aid. He told his story, but he 
never returned to seek the mine or the nuggets 
he had cast away. 

In the desert the hot winds blow and the sands 
shift and there is never a traveler’s track but is 
blown away. The skeletons out there, buried so 
deep one day and exposed so bare and naked the 
next, tell no stories. Only be sure of this: What 
the sands uncover one day they will cover again 
the next* And, the desert rat says, what they 
cover they will also uncover—some day. 

The Breyfogle in Death Valley 

One day in 1862 while racing across Nevada, a 
horse ridden by Pony Bob Haslam of the Pony 
Express stumbled to his knees. In regaining his 
feet, the horse kicked loose a chunk of rock that 
caught the eye of his rider. He took it to Vir¬ 
ginia City, where it was pronounced to be silver 
ore of extraordinary richness. The news spread 
like a prairie fire, and Californians by the thou¬ 
sands stampeded for “the Reese River strike,” 
the “excitement” being centered around Austin, 
Nevada. 


275 


On the Open Range 


Staying in Los Angeles at the time the news 
broke, were three men who, although without 
funds or means of conveyance, determined to get 
to Reese River. Their names were McLeod, 
O’Banion, and Breyfogle. The great silver 
strike was four hundred miles north across the 
most desolate, forbidding, and inexorable region 
of mountain and desert on the North American 
continent. The stage route led nearly four hun¬ 
dred miles northwest of Los Angeles to Sacra¬ 
mento City, still three hundred miles away from 
the silver, and then cut east. I am giving air line 
measurements. Either route twisted like a cork¬ 
screw. There was no traveled road of any kind 
across the desert. All people of sound judgment 
took the stage route. Some of the forty-niners 
who had tried the short-cut paid their lives to 
give one locality it traversed a name—Death Val¬ 
ley. Still, if you are going afoot, it makes a dif¬ 
ference whether you are to walk, say, six hun¬ 
dred miles or a thousand. Breyfogle and his 
partners were going to Nevada silver afoot. 
They decided to cut straight across. 

It was about the first of June, summer in the 
desert, when they set out, carrying some provi¬ 
sions, a blanket apiece, canteens, and rifles with 
which they hoped to procure jack rabbit meat 
along the way. At the San Fernando Mission 
the hospitable padres tried to persuade them to 
276 


Lost Mines 


abandon such a perilous undertaking, but they 
trudged on. They crossed the Mohave Desert, 
skirted the southern spurs of the Argus Range, 
crept across the glittering waste known as the 
Panamint Valley, and at length began ascending 
the awful Panamint Mountains, from the heights 
of which can be seen to the east the weird, un¬ 
earthly basin of horrors called Death Valley and 
on beyond it the Funeral Range. 

On the eastern slope of the Panamints they 
came, while following a crude Indian trail, to a 
rock tinaja in which they found water. Here 
they prepared to spend the night. The ground 
was so rough that they experienced great diffi¬ 
culty in finding smooth places on which to lie 
down. McLeod and O’Banion made their pal¬ 
let together near the water hole; Breyfogle found 
a bedding place about two hundred yards down 
the slope. The men, as was their custom, slept 
with all their clothing on, removing only their 
shoes. 

That unusual separation of himself from his 
comrades saved Breyfogle’s life. He woke in 
the night to hear shouts and groans and to real¬ 
ize that Indians were murdering the other sleep¬ 
ers. He jumped from his blanket, grabbed his 
shoes, and with them and nothing else in his hand 
fled barefooted to the valley below. Only a 
crazy man of brute toughness could have run 
277 


Ox the Open Range 


barefooted in darkness over rocks and thorn stub¬ 
ble as Breyfogle ran. Breyfogle was very near 
the brute both physically and mentally, and now 
he was utterly crazed with fear. 

At daylight he found himself down in the bot¬ 
tom of Death Valley. Fearful lest the Indians 
might still follow him, he secreted himself for 
several hours in a fold of gravel and sand before 
attempting to cross to the eastern side, a distance 
of about ten miles. His feet were so bruised and 
torn that he was unable to put on his shoes. 

The terrific June sun beat upon his bare head. 
Thirst became stronger than fear. In the after¬ 
noon he began traveling. By some mad chance 
he came at the eastern edge of the valley to a 
little geyser-like hole of alkali water. He drank 
it, the first water he had tasted since the previous 
evening. It made him deathly sick, but he soon 
recovered, and, filling his shoes with water—they 
were big shoes and they were stout—limped on. 
After the experience of the night before, Brey¬ 
fogle would never again lie down to sleep near a 
water hole. 

After traveling about an hour into the lower 
foothills of the Funeral Range, he halted, heaped 
up some rocks in the form of a wall to lie behind, 
and went to sleep. During the night he drank 
the contents of one of his shoes. At the break 
of day he drank the water from the other shoe 
278 


Lost Mines 


and then set out to gain the top of the range 
eight or ten miles ahead of him. He was sick. 
The alkali water whetted more than it allayed 
thirst. 

About halfway up the mountain Breyfogle 
saw off to the south a green spot that he took to 
be trees marking a spring. He judged it to be 
about three miles away. He turned towards it. 
He had covered about half the distance to the 
green spot when his attention was arrested by 
float rock of a soft grayish-white cast with gold 
showing plainly all through it. 

Fearful as he was of Indians, exhausted and 
battered as he was from the torture he had en¬ 
dured, mad as he was for a swallow of fresh, cool 
water, he paused at the sight of the gold ore. 
He picked up several of the richest pieces and 
tied them in his bandana. He started on again 
towards the green spot but had taken only a few 
steps when he came upon the vein itself from 
which the float rock had washed. Here the ore 
was pinkish feldspar, much richer in gold than 
the first samples. Breyfogle discarded them and 
gathered a bandana of the pink ore. 

The time spent gathering ore amounted to 
only a few minutes. Breyfogle skulked, limped 
on towards the green spot. It proved to be a 
low, bushy mesquite tree, very green and full of 
green beans. The man ate so ravenously of them 
279 


On the Open Range 


and was so disappointed in not finding water that 
he collapsed, and, as he afterwards said, lost his 
mind. 

But he apparently did not lose his sense of di¬ 
rection. He recovered; he could never recollect 
when. The experiences he endured for days fol¬ 
lowing remained ever afterwards absolutely blank 
to him. Water of some kind he must have some¬ 
how found, but how and where he could not re¬ 
member. He knew the value of the juice from 
the visnaga, a kind of cactus. He no doubt ate 
roots and herbs. He kept walking north, across 
the Funeral Range, and then across the wide 
Amargosa Desert. At the clear, fresh water of 
Baxter Springs, fully two hundred and fifty 
miles—as one must travel—from the point 
where he had emerged from Death Valley, Brey- 
fogle came to his right mind. After remaining 
here for two days, drinking water and eating 
whatever green and edible vegetation he could 
find, he continued on—bound for the Reese River 
silver strike. He crossed into Smoky Valley and 
there saw the first human being he had glimpsed 
since the loss of his partners. 

A man by the name of Wilson was ranching 
in Smoky Valley. While out one morning look¬ 
ing for horses, he came upon the prints of a man’s 
bare feet. Astonished at their size and shape, he 
put spurs to his horse and within a few miles 
280 


Lost Mines 


overtook Breyfogle. For many years after¬ 
wards his description of the human object before 
him was a part of a fireside story familiar all 
over the West. 

Breyfogle, he said, was all but naked. His 
pants were in shreds, the shreds coming only to 
his knees, while the tattered remains of a shirt 
did little more than cover the shoulders. His 
black hair and beard were long and matted. 
Breyfogle was a Bavarian, and at this time he 
was about forty years old. He was heavy-boned, 
thick through the breast, stood all of six feet 
high, and under normal conditions weighed 
around two hundred pounds. He was strikingly 
bow-legged, and, as has already been suggested, 
he had enormous feet. He was naturally of a 
swarthy complexion, and now he appeared to 
Wilson like some giant mummy that had been 
scorched by fire. He was still carrying his shoes. 
In one of them was stuffed a bandana tied around 
some specimens of ore. 

The rancher took the wild man of the desert 
home with him and, aided by his wife, provided 
him with food and clothing. A few days later 
he took him to Austin and there turned him over 
to a mining friend named Jake Gooding, who 
put Breyfogle to work in a quartz mill. 

Breyfogle told Gooding all he could about his 
gold mine. The samples of ore he showed told 
281 


On the Open Range 


more. Some were almost half gold. The season 
was too hot for an immediate expedition, but 
three months later Gooding and Breyfogle, ac¬ 
companied by five or six other men and well pro¬ 
vided with saddle horses, pack mules, water 
casks, and provisions, set out. Upon reaching 
the Funeral Range, however, they were met by a 
war party of Panamint Indians and turned back 
to Austin for reinforcements. 

During the winter a second expedition made 
up of about a dozen men set forth to find the 
gold. They got through the. mountains to Death 
Valley without Indian troubles. Breyfogle led 
them to the geyser-like hole of alkali water where 
he had filled his shoes. Without much difficulty, 
he led them to a low, wall-shaped heap of rocks, 
where he had spent the night after his partners 
were murdered. From this he led them on up 
the Funeral Range a distance; then he turned 
abruptly south—towards a spot no longer green, 
though only a few months before so green that it 
had appeared to mark a spring of water. About 
three miles from where they started south the 
party came to a bare, scrubbj^ mesquite tree. 

“This,” said Breyfogle, “is where I gorged the 
mesquite beans, fainted, and lost my mind. We 
ought to have passed the gold on our way here 
from the north. I picked up the specimens of 
282 


Lost Mines 


ore just over yonder and put them in my ban¬ 
dana.” 

Of course, there were other mesquite shrubs in 
the country, but Breyfogle was sure of the one. 
He was sure of the water hole; he was sure of the 
heap of rocks. But the gold? Breyfogle coursed 
and recoursed away from and back to the mes¬ 
quite. He saw another mesquite. He wavered. 
The men with him searched frantically in every 
direction. Then some of them jeered him. Some 
abused him for having led them on a wild goose 
chase. Some were sure that if they could remain 
in the region a reasonable length of time they 
could find the gold. But a party full of discord 
will not persist at anything. The gold hunters 
packed up and returned to Austin. Breyfogle 
left the country, and thus ended what promised 
to be but an easy walk to the mine he gave his 
name to. 

Not all the hunters who have gone out since 
have got back to explain their failure. But desert 
rats still search. George Hearst, father of the 
famous publisher and one of the most successful 
mining men of his day, secured a piece of Brey- 
fogle’s ore and for two winters kept prospectors 
in the field looking for the lost vein. He believed 
in it. Many men still believe in it, though most 
of them think that while Breyfogle was waiting 
283 


On the Open Range 


in Austin for cooler weather before returning to 
claim his gold, a cloudburst swept down the 
slopes of the Funeral Mountains and covered it 
up. They are hoping that another cloudburst 
will uncover it. 


Bowie^s Secret 

Although in a ruined condition, the great 
stone corral that nearly two hundred years ago 
protected the Spanish fort on the San Saba 
River of Texas still stands. It is out in a pas¬ 
ture near the little town of Menard, and deer 
and wild turkeys still run by it as they did when 
Spanish missionaries and soldiers and Indian 
converts made this spot the only permanent habi¬ 
tation for hundreds of miles around. Carved on 
one of the weathered rocks that mark the gate¬ 
way into the corral, are these words: 

BOWIE 

MINE 

1832 

Whether James Bowie wrote there his own 
name and the date, no man can say. Bowie won 
fame at the Alamo, where he paid his life for the 
cause of Texas independence, and his name will 
always be associated with the Bowie knife—once 
as common on the frontier as the rifle and pistol; 

284 


Lost Mines 


but to thousands of people he is remembered 
chiefly for his connection with a fabulous mine 
somewhere in the San Saba country. 

Tradition has it that the Spaniards worked the 
mine and extracted unbelievable amounts of sil¬ 
ver from it before they were driven away by the 
Comanches. Either they or Indians, who hated 
miners, are supposed to have concealed all traces 
of the mine. Certainly, as history records, the 
Spaniards prospected for silver on the San Saba. 
Certainly, also, soon after he adventured into 
Texas, James Bowie began searching for the 
mine supposed to have been covered up by the 
Spaniards, and while on one expedition fought a 
desperate battle with the savages. Legend says 
that a friendly Lipan Indian showed him the 
secret entrance to the shaft. If Bowie really saw 
a mine, he was never able to work it, and the 
secret of its location died with him. 

For a century almost it has been known as the 
Bowie Mine, though often it is called the Lost 
San Saba Mine. Men still look for it far and 
wide along the San Saba and Llano rivers—a 
land that remains for the most part unplowed 
and owned by a sparse population of ranchers. 
As the stories go, the mine has been glimpsed 
many times, but always to be lost again. Some¬ 
times it is supposed to be a gold mine as well as 
a silver mine. Now it is said to be in a cave, 
285 


On the Open Range 


now under a river, now hidden in a thicket or 
down a ravine. The tales about it are without 
number, and of all the legendary mines in the 
vast territory of the United States once owned 
by Spain it is probably the most famous. 

One of the earliest seekers for it was a man by 
the name of Dixon. Back in the years while 
Texas was still at war with Mexico, a lone In¬ 
dian led Dixon into the San Saba hills to show 
him a cave in which, he said, was a vast storage 
of silver bullion left by the Spaniards. When 
they got into the hills, they learned that the 
Apaches and Comanches were on the warpath 
and turned back. Shortly thereafter the Indian 
died. Then Dixon went down into Mexico to 
search among ancient archives for some record 
that would lead him to the mine. He found 
nothing, but he appointed an agent; many years 
later this agent brought him a chart. 

The chart gave directions for finding two thou¬ 
sand bars of silver that had been melted from San 
Saba ore and stored in a tunnel. Dixon began 
making preparations to secure it, but about this 
time the Civil War came on and the expedi¬ 
tion had to be postponed. At last, however, 
more than thirty years after the lone Indian had 
led him into the San Saba hills, Dixon with a 
strong party of men reached the promised land, 
prepared to act. 


286 


Lost Mines 


The chart directed them to go three leagues 
(about nine miles) up the San Saba River from 
the old Spanish fort and then to go one league 
up Silver Creek. They had no trouble following 
these directions. The chart now called for a 
mound of stones on a hillside. They found it. 
Under the stones should be half of a Mexican 
metate (a stone used to grind corn on). They 
found half of a metate . 

Now they were to measure off thirty varas due 
south and dig; there they should find a copper 
peg. They found it. Another thirty varas to 
the south should be another copper peg. It was 
there. Still another thirty varas they should go 
and then turn west. On this east-to-west line 
they should find three more copper pegs. They 
found them all. Next, going on west for an un¬ 
determined distance, they should come to two 
mesquite trees growing close together; in the 
ground between these two trees they should dig 
up another half of a metate . 

As the men ran their lin£s and dug up copper 
peg after copper peg, their excitement was in¬ 
tense. They worked in a trot. Finding the two 
mesquites with the piece of metate at their roots 
proved to be a puzzling business. Finally, how¬ 
ever, the stump of one tree was located, and, 
surely enough, excavation around it brought to 
light the second half of a metate . This half fit- 
287 


On the Open Range 


ted exactly with the other. Across the gray sur¬ 
face of the rejoined halves the letters of one 
word showed plainly. The word was EX- 



r, / *\> 

OLD SHAFT 0r / J 

SAH SABA / *} 

M/HE / 

V / *j 

___ % 

y 30 / c. y 50 v - 7 ^ ov - 
$eca/7s/ ' / ' r 

AfAfafP ha/f / 

/ 






CAVAD. Ecccavad means dig. But dig 
where? 

The chart now called for a tree with three 
prongs to the south of the last half of the metate ; 
288 





Lost Mines 


fixed between these three prongs should be a 
flint rock about the size of a turkey egg. Natu¬ 
rally all the trees in the land had grown a great 
deal since the Spaniards retreated so many years 
before, and many of them had decayed. It was 
only after a considerable number of trees had 
been chopped down and the branches cut out that 
the piece of flint was found. It was completely 
imbedded in the wood. 

The next step was to sight from the tree with 
the flint in it to the mound of rocks at which they 
had started. The intersection of this line with 
the east-and-west line was the place to dig into 
the old shaft. Then, according to the directions, 
this shaft would have to be cleaned out for sixty 
feet straight down. It would lead off into a 
twisting tunnel, also full of debris, and the tun¬ 
nel would enter into the “store room” with its 
two thousand bars of silver. 

And now Dixon and his men began digging 
into what the chart said was the ancient Spanish 
shaft. They had not gone far before they were 
thoroughly convinced that instead of making a 
new hole they were actually taking the filling out 
of an old one. Certainly this was encouraging. 
However, before long they began to realize that 
in order to remove the rocks and dirt from a wide 
shaft sixty feet deep and then from a long and 
complicated tunnel, they needed hoisting machin- 
289 


On the Open Range 


ery and supplies to last many weeks. This was 
real labor. 

“Who on earth,” one of them mumbled, 
“would go to so much trouble to hide two thou¬ 
sand bars of silver?” 

“If it’s necessary to tunnel out this whole 
mountain to get the silver,” said another, “some¬ 
body else can do the work.” 

“Yes,” said a third, “and after the mountain 
has been torn down, who’s to guarantee us even 
one bar of silver?” 

Another man was afraid of Indians, and so, 
full of dissatisfaction and doubt, the party broke 
up and went back home. One of the men ce¬ 
mented the halves of the metate together and 
used it for a chicken trough. Dixon had become 
an old man; he gave up the search forever. 

A traveler up Silver Creek may see today an 
enormous hole out of which hundreds of tons of 
rock and earth have been taken. ITe may see 
men working, trying to find their way to the 
fabulous storage room of silver bars. But this 
work belongs to a story that has not yet ended. 

Maybe, after all, the wonderful lode is not 
buried so many fathoms deep under rocks. 

“Soon after the Civil War,” an old frontiers¬ 
man by the name of McDaniel tells his story, 
“my father went out on the fringe of the settle¬ 
ments to run a ranch. I was just a kid then. 

290 


Lost Mines 


The Indians were so bad at times that only 
about half the cowboys worked on the range, the 
others keeping guard over the horses and the 
ranch quarters. My mother cooked on the fire¬ 
place for a couple dozen men, but the work and 
anxiety were so hard on her that Father said he 
wouldn’t let her stay in such a country any 
longer. So one day he put her and us children in 
a wagon and drove us to Burnet County to stay 
with an uncle and aunt. The Comanches were 
raiding there, too, but not so often, and there 
were more settlers to afford protection. 

“Not long after we got there, two or three 
neighbor families came to see us. Of course, we 
boys must go swimming and fishing in the creek. 
The grown folks were afraid for us to go alone— 
afraid of Indians; so a kind of picnic party was 
made up. After we got to the creek, I and an¬ 
other boy named Pate slipped across and ran to 
a hole that was hid by a bend. 

“We were pulling fish out and bragging about 
our luck when twelve Comanche warriors rode 
down upon us out of the bushes. Two of them 
dragged Pate and me up on their horses behind 
them. As soon as they got off a little distance, 
they stopped and blindfolded us. They did not 
torture us. 

“It was about eleven o’clock when they cap¬ 
tured us, and all that afternoon and into the 
night we rode like the devil beating tan bark. 

291 


On tiie Open Range 


We could not see a wink, but we knew by the 
coolness of the air and sounds of insects and coy¬ 
otes when night came. We also knew that we 
were traveling over a hilly country. At last the 
Indians stopped, pulled us off, undid our band¬ 
ages, and told us to lie down and go to sleep. 
We slept. 

“When we awoke next morning, we found our¬ 
selves in a shallow cave. I noticed some of the 
Comanches picking up what looked to be gravel. 
They had a fire, a little iron pot, and a bullet 
mould. They were melting these pebbles and 
running them into bullets. I picked up four or 
five of the pebbles and put them in my pocket. 
We stayed in the cave all that day, all the next 
night, and until late the third night. Of course, 
both of us boys were looking for a chance to es¬ 
cape, but we were afraid to make any move. 
We were not tied but we were guarded. 

“On the second afternoon of our captivity, the 
Comanches brought in a jug of fire water from 
somewhere and they all got drunk. By good 
dark the warrior guarding us was as drunk as the 
other Indians. He let the fire go out and keeled 
over dead to the world. We were in a kind of 
pen made by the cave wall on one side and the 
sleeping Comanches on the other. Now was our 
time. 

“We slipped out and found a horse tied in the 
292 



THE DESERT RAT 








Lost Mines 


hollow. We both got on him and headed him 
southeast. He kept a general course except 
when we misguided him, which we frequently 
did; it later turned out that he had been stolen 
from a settler near our people. After riding the 
night out and then, with a few stops, until nearly 
sundown next day, we reached home. While we 
were telling about our experiences, I pulled the 
pebbles from my pocket. They proved, upon 
examination by a man who knew, to contain gold 
and silver as well as lead. 

“I have tried many a time to ride back to the 
cave. It’s been like looking for the white cow 
with a black face. I went to that cave in dark¬ 
ness; I left it in darkness; it is still in darkness. 
When the Comanches saw that the white men 
were going to take the country for good, they 
doubtless filled up the entrance to the cave. 
Some day—perhaps it may be a hundred years 
from now—the cave and the mine will be found.” 

Along about the time that Dixon and his In¬ 
dian guide were skulking among the San Saba 
hills, Captain Ben McCulloch of the Texas 
rangers, so yet another story goes, detailed two 
of his men to scout for Indian sign west of the 
upper Colorado River. 

One evening out in that lonely and unsettled 
region they staked their horses in a little valley, 
293 


On the Open Range 


ate supper, and lay down on their leggins and 
saddle blankets to sleep. When they arose about 
daybreak, they found their horses gone. Coyotes 
had slipped up during the night and gnawed in 
two the rawhide ropes with which the horses were 
picketed. A dense fog enveloped the hills and 
valleys so that the rangers could see nothing. 
Nevertheless, they struck out to hunt the horses. 
The fog held on for hours. The best of woods¬ 
men can lose his directions in such a fog. When 
this one lifted, the rangers discovered that they 
were lost. They had not found the horses, and 
now they could not find their way back to their 
saddles and canteens. 

As the sun climbed higher and the heat of the 
day came on, the rangers in their desire for 
water began to forget all about horses and camp. 
The sun climbed downward, and still they were 
lost and still they had found no water. They 
chewed the lead out of their six-shooter cart¬ 
ridges, but that time-honored alleviation to thirst 
afforded little relief. By the time night came 
they were so thirsty they could not sleep. 
Water, water was now their sole objective. As 
soon as they could see to travel, they pushed on. 

At length, from the summit of a low range of 
hills, they saw below them far to the west a wind¬ 
ing line of green. What stream it marked they 
knew not, for they had never seen it before. Its 
294 


Lost Mines 


waters were life, and they were so clear that the 
sun danced on the pebbles at the bottom. 

As one of the rangers, after the burnings of 
thirst were quenched, lay looking into the sun¬ 
lit pool from which he had drunk, he was startled 
to discover that the bottom of it was strewn with 
minute particles shining like gold. Calling to his 
companion, he said: “We have lost our horses, 
our saddles, and our guns, but we have found 
something better than all of them. Here is 
gold, gold, world without end!” 

The shining particles, some of them as large as 
coarsely ground corn grits, were so thick among 
the sand and gravel that they had the appear¬ 
ance of having been sown bjr the handful. The 
rangers waded into the water and gathered them 
until each had a pocketful. Then one of them 
crept up on a turkey gobbler that was watering 
and shot it with a six-shooter. That night they 
feasted. 

On their way out they stopped to rest high up 
on the shoulder of a long, rough hill. They were 
sprawled out on the ground, neither talking, 
when suddenly their attention was arrested by 
that peculiar cry of a hawk so resembling the 
call of a young wild turkey. Looking towards 
the hawk, which was alit in a stunted, half-dead 
post oak, they noticed something sticking out 
from a crotch of the tree. 

295 


On the Open Range 


It proved to be an ancient rust-eaten pick, its 
handle gone and one point encased so deeply that 
it could not be removed. The other point stuck 
out toward the head of the little stream they had 
just left. Then the rangers realized that they 
were not the first to have discovered gold in the 
region. They went on, leaving the unknown 
prospector’s signboard still pointing. Late in 
the afternoon they saw Packsaddle Mountain 
looming in the distance. From this well-known 
landmark they got their bearings. 

A few weeks later they exhibited their gathering 
of nuggets to an expert on minerals. He pro¬ 
nounced the stuff to be what miners call “drift 
gold,” gold that has washed down-stream from 
a mother lode. The mother lode, he added, might 
be miles away, but, wherever it was, it must be 
exceedingly rich. On many a long ride in after 
years the rangers sought the golden pool, but 
though they were Ben McCulloch’s own men— 
plainsmen and woodsmen right—they never 
found it again. It may be that the mute finger 
of the old pick on the shoulder of a long, rough 
mountain still points to the source of the drift 
gold. The granite hills of the Llano guard well 
their secrets. 


296 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Unless a book arouses in the reader a kind of hunger 
for more information, more beauty, more “free life and 
fresh air,” or whatever it is that makes the book excel¬ 
lent—well, then, it just isn’t excellent. My belief is 
that tens of thousands of people, both young and 
old, living west of the Mississippi River would nourish 
themselves with a more proper literary diet if they 
but knew where the wholesome grazing grounds of their 
own range are and how to get to those grounds. This 
belief, coupled with the bold thrust that On the Open 
Range will whet appetites for more of the same thing 
and further coupled with the conviction expressed in 
the dedication and preface of this volume, has led me 
to put down the following list of books. 

It is not meant to be exhaustive. Only books that 
are in print are listed, and this principle, of course, pre¬ 
cludes mention of some of the very best literature per¬ 
taining to the open range country. A fuller list, but 
one more restricted in geographical scope, may be found 
in a monograph entitled Finding Literature on the 
Texas Plains , by John William Rogers and J. Frank 
Dobie (The Southwest Fress, Dallas, Texas). As most 
people in considering the acquirement of a book regard 
its price, prices are given. Certain books considered 
especially interesting to youthful readers are marked 
with an asterisk. 


297 


On the Open Range 


I. ANIMALS AND HUNTERS OF ANIMALS 
(Auxiliary to Chapters I, II, and III) 

Branch, E. Douglas. The Hunting of the Buffalo. D. 
Appleton and Co., New York. $3. 

*Crockett, David. Autobiography (with an Introduction 
by Hamlin Garland). Charles Scribner’s Sons, New 
York. $1. 

*Dixon, Olive K. Life of Billy Dixon. Southwest Press, 
Dallas, Texas. $3. 

Hornaday, William T. A Wild Animal Round-up. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. $5. 

Ingersoll, Ernest. Wild Neighbors. The Macmillan 
Company, New York. $.75. 

* Irving, Washington. A Tour on the Prairies. There are 
many editions. The Harlow Publishing Company, 
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has an edition which sells 
for $.75. 

Jaeger, Edmund C. Denizens of the Desert. Houghton 
Mifflin Company, Boston. $3. 

Neihardt, John G. The Song of Hugh Glass. The Mac¬ 
millan Company, New York. $1.50. 

*Parkman, Francis. The Oregon Trail. Any of various 
school editions. 

Roosevelt, Theodore. Hunting Adventures in the West. 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. $2.50. 

*Ruxton, George Frederick. In the Old West (edited by 
Horace Kephart). The Macmillan Company, New 
York. $.75. 

*Seton, Ernest Thompson. Wild Animals I Have Known. 
Grosset and Dunlap, New York. $1. Lives of the 
Hunted. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. $2.50. 
298 


Suggested Readings 


II. THE WORLD OF CATTLE, HORSES, AND 
HORSEMEN 

(Auxiliary to Chapters IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX) 

* Adams, Andy. The Log of a Cowboy and Wells Brothers. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1 each. 
*Barnes, Will C. Tales of the X-Bar Horse Camp. The 
Breeder’s Gazette, Chicago. $2.50. 

Cook, James H. Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. Yale 
University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. $4. 
Dobie, J. Frank. A Vaquero of the Brush Country. The 
Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas. $3.50. 

* Hagedorn, Hermann. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1. 

Haley, J. Evetts. The X I T Ranch of Texas. The 
Lakeside Press, Chicago. $4. (Temporarily with¬ 
drawn from circulation.) 

Hough, Emerson. North of 36. Grosset and Dunlap, 
New York. $.75. 

* James, Will. Smoky. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New 

York. $1. 

Lewis, Alfred Henry. Wolfville. Frederick A. Stokes 
Company, New York. $2. 

Lomax, John A. Cowboy Songs. The Macmillan Com¬ 
pany, New York. $1.75. 

*0. Henry. The Heart of the West. Doubleday, Doran 
and Company, Garden City, New York. $.90. 
Raine, William MacLeod, and Barnes, Will C. Cattle. 
Doubleday, Doran and Company, Garden City, New 
York. $2. 

Rhodes, Eugene Manlove. Good Men and True. Grosset 
and Dunlap, New York. $.75. 

*Rollins, Philip Ashton. Jinglebob. Charles Scribner’s 
Sons, New York. $2.50. 

299 


On the Open Range 


Russell, Charles M. Trails Plowed Under. Doubleday, 
Doran and Company, Garden City, New York. 
$3.50. 

*Santee, Ross. Cowboy. Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 
New York. $2. 

Siringo, Charles A. Riata and Spurs. Houghton Mifflin 
Company, Boston. $3. 

Thorp, N. Howard. Songs of the Cowboys. Houghton 
Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.75. 

* Trail Drivers of Texas, The. (Miscellaneous narratives 

compiled by J. Marvin Hunter and George W. 
Saunders.) The Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas. $5. 
Treadwell, Edward F. The Cattle King. The Macmillan 
Company, New York. $3. 

* White, Stewart Edward. Arizona Nights. Grosset and 

Dunlap, New York. $.75, 

Wister, Owen. The Virginian. Grosset and Dunlap, 
New York. $.75. 

III. INDIANS 
(Auxiliary to Chapter X) 

Austin, Mary. The Basket Woman. Houghton Mifflin 
Company, Boston. $1. 

Bandelier, A. F., The Delight Makers. Dodd, Mead and 
Company, New York. $3. 

*Cushing, Frank Hamilton, Zuhi Folk Tales (with a Fore¬ 
word by J. W. Powell and an Introduction by Mary 
Austin). Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $5. 

Davis, Britton. The Truth about Geronimo. Yale 
University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. $4. 
*De Huff, Elizabeth Willis. Tay Tay’s Tales. Harcourt, 
Brace and Company, New York. $2. 

300 


Suggested Readings 


*Gillett, James B., and Driggs, Howard R. The Texas 
Ranger. World Book Company, Yonkers, New 
York. $1. 

*Lehmann, Herman. Nine Years with the Indians . Fron¬ 
tier Times, Bandera, Texas. $2.50. 

*Long Lance, Chief Buffalo Child. Long Lance. Cosmo¬ 
politan Book Corporation, New York. $2. 

Lummis, Charles F. Mesa, Canon and Pueblo. The 
Century Company, New York. $4. 

Smith, Jefferson D., and Clinton L. The Boy Captives. 
Frontier Times, Bandera, Texas. $2. 

*Vestal, Stanley. Kit Carson. Houghton Mifflin Company, 
Boston. $3.50. 

Wissler, Clark. North American Indians of the Plains. 
American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
$.75. 


IV. THE SPANISH MEXICAN BACKGROUND 
(Auxiliary to Chapter XI) 

Of well documented historical works on Spanish 
activities in what is now United States territory there 
is no dearth, but such graphic narratives as Cabeza de 
Vaca’s narrative (translated) and Herbert E. Bolton’s 
Spanish Explorations in the Southwest are out of print. 
Out of print too are such entertaining books as George 
W. Kendall’s Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expe¬ 
dition and John C. Duval’s Early Times in Texas , both 
showing the Mexicans as protagonists of the English- 
speaking pioneers. The brevity of this list is out of 
all proportion with the importance and interest of the 
subject. 


301 


On the Open Range 


Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. Alfred 
A. Knopf, New York. $2.50. 

* Jennings, N. A. A Texas Ranger (with a Foreword by 
J. Frank Dobie). Southwest Press, Dallas, Texas. 
$3. 

*Ruxton, George Frederick. Wild Life in the Rocky 
Mountains (with an Introduction by Horace Kep- 
hart).. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1. 


V. FOLK-LORE 

(Auxiliary to Chapters XII, XIII, and XIV) 

The English-speaking people who pioneered the West 
developed a distinct folk-lore of their own. There is 
an abundance of material on the folk-lore of Indians 
and Negroes, but that of the white people is still, for the 
most part, to be found in widely scattered fragments. 

Allsopp, Fred W. Folk-lore of Romantic Arkansas. The 
Grolier Society, New York. In two volumes, $10. 
Botkin, B. A. Editor of Folk-Say. University of Okla¬ 
homa Press, Norman, Oklahoma. Vol. I (1929), $1; 
Vol. II (1930), $5. 

Dobie, J. Frank. * Coronado's Children. The Southwest 
Press, Dallas, Texas, $3, Editor of the Publications 
of the Texas Folk-Lore Society. Texas Folk-Lore 
Society, Austin, Texas. The publication entitled 
Texas and Southwestern Lore, $2.75, is especially 
recommended; other Publications, which have ap¬ 
peared annually since 1923, vary in price. 


302 


WORDS, NAMES, AND PHRASES PECULIAR 
TO THE OPEN RANGE COUNTRY 


Note: Spanish proper names that have been Americanized are 
given the pronunciation common among the English-speaking people 
who use the names. 

adios (a-thS-o's). Good-bye. 

adobe (a-do'-be). Earth from which unburnt bricks are made; the 
bricks themselves; a house made of adobe, 
agrita (a-gre'-ta). A bush with spine-tipped leaves and bearing 
succulent red berries belonging to the barberry family; called 
also wild currant and chaparral berry, 
aimed. Intended. 

Alfredo (al-fra'-tho). Alfred. 

Amargosa (a-mar-go'-sa). Bitter; the name of a range of mountains. 
Americano (a-mgr'-S-ca'-no). A citizen of the United States, 
arroyo (ar-ro'-yo). A creek, usually dry. 
ash cake. A corn cake baked on the open fire. 

Bass, Sam. A Texas outlaw who was generous with other people’s 
money and not a “killer.” 

bayo coyote (ba'-yo ko-yo'-ta). A creamy dun horse with a black 
stripe down his back. 

bear-grass. A plant belonging to the yucca family, 
bed down. To lie down; to cause to lie down. 

black chaparral. A very thorny kind of brush peculiar to the South¬ 
west; 

Blanco (bl&n-co). White; various towns and streams of the South¬ 
west bear the name. 

bonanza. A large and rich body of ore; hence, prosperity. 

Boone, Daniel. A frontiersman associated particularly with Ken¬ 
tucky. 

Bosque Grande (b6s'-ka gran'-da). Big Woods, 
bottom. (1) Endurance; as, “a horse of bottom.” (2) A low ground 
contiguous to a stream. 


303 


On the Open Range 


Bowie (boo-f), James. One of the defenders of the Alamo and a 
searcher for the San Saba Mine. 

brand-burner. A cow thief who mutilates brands in order to destroy 
the legitimate owner’s claim. 

branding chute. A narrow, boarded passage into which cattle and 
horses are driven and held so that they can be branded without 
having to be thrown. 

bravo (bra'-vo). Brave, fierce; an exclamation meaning fine! 
brazo (bra-zo). Arm. 

Brazos (brS,-z6s, Americanized). A Texas river, 
brush. (1) Shrubs, often thorny, and small trees. (2) A skirmish 
or fight not important enough to be called a battle, 
brush popper. A cowhand who rides in the brush, 
buffalo berry. A scarlet edible berry growing on a bush belonging 
to the oleaster family. 

buffalo skinner. A man who made a business of skinning buffaloes 
for their hides. 

buffalo wallow. A depression in the ground in which buffaloes wal¬ 
lowed; a sink-hole. 

bull-whacker. A freighter who drove oxen (often called bulls), 
bullet mould. A contrivance for shaping rifle balls from melted lead, 
burro (bbo'-ro). Donkey. 

canteen. Container for water. 

Carnoviste (car-n6-ves'-tS). Name of an Apache chief. 

Casa Blanca (ka'-sa blan'-ka). White House. 

ceniso (sa-ne'-so). Leucophyllum texanum , called also ash plant. It 
is a bush with gray leaves, and after a rain blossoms into myriads 
of lavender-colored flowers. 
centavo (sSn-ta'-vo). Cent. 

chaparral (ch&p'-a-r&l'). In general, brush of a thorny nature. See 
black chaparral. 

chapote (cha-po'-ta). Wild, or Mexican, persimmon, 
chart. A direction to buried treasure; called also waybill. 

Cheyenne (shi-Sn')- A tribe of Western Indians. 

Chillicothe (Chll'-I-kSth'-S). Each of several states has a town by 
this name. 

Chihuahua (che-wa'-wa) Trail. A freight route from San Antonio, 
Texas, to Chihuahua City, Mexico. 

Chisholm (Chis'-um) Trail. A cattle trail leading from Texas to 
Abilene, Kansas. 


304 


Words, Phrases and Names 


cholla (cho'-ya). A kind of cactus, 
chuck. Food. 

chuck box. A box, made to fit in the hind end of a wagon, serving 
the purpose of a kitchen cabinet, 
chuck wagon. Supply wagon, driven by the cook, 
chute. A narrow boarded passage designed to brand live stock in, 
to load them through into freight cars, to pass them through 
intQ dipping vats, etc. 

Cimarron (sim'-a-ron'). River in Oklahoma; the name means out¬ 
law, mountain sheep. 

claim. Land staked off by a miner, preempted by a homesteader, 
or otherwise laid claim to. 

Comanche (ko-mSn'-chS). The most numerous and important tribe 
of Southwestern Indians. 

Colorado (kSl-6-ra'-do). Various rivers and towns bear the name, 
which means red. 
commissary. Supply store. 
companero (kom-pa-nya'-ro). Companion. 

conquistadores (kon-kes'-ta-thor'-as). Conquerors; Spanish explorers. 
contento (k5n-tSn'-to). Contented, 
corral (ko-r&l'). A pen or inclosure. 

Cortez (kor'-tSz). Conqueror of Mexico, 
cow crowd. An outfit, or unit, of cowboys, 
cowhand. Cowboy. 

cow-whip. A long whip used more to pop than to lash cattle, 
crease. To shoot a horse so as to graze the tendon of his neck, 
stunning but not killing him. 

Crockett, David. Tennessee frontiersman and hero of the Alamo, 
cut, or cut out, cattle. To separate them. 

cutting horse. A horse trained for separating cattle in a herd; usu¬ 
ally a very quick and intelligent animal. 

desert bighorn. Rocky Mountain sheep. 

desert rat. Veteran prospector of the desert, usually without a mine 
or any other property, 
dicker. To bargain for, to haggle. 

dogie (do'-gS). A motherless calf; loosely, any kind of cow brute, 
doubloon. A gold coin valued at about $20. 

drag. The rear end of a moving herd. “ Riding the drag,” driving 
the tail cattle. 

Drake, Sir Francis (1540-1596). Great English sea rover. 

305 


On the Open Range 


draw. (1) A shallow drain for rainfall; (2) withdrawal of a six- 
shooter; as in the phrase, “quick on the draw.” 
dugout. A room made by digging in the ground, usually on a hillside, 
dun. Yellow. 

Dutch oven. An iron baking pan used for cooking on an open fire. 

El Rio de las Animas (61 re'-o da las a'-ne-mas). The River of Lost 
Souls; in Colorado, 
elected. In a special sense, doomed; 

Elojio (a-lo'-hS-o). Name of a man. 
escondida (Ss'-kon-de-tha). Hidden. 
escopeta (Ss-ko-pa'-ta). Blunderbuss, shotgun. 

Esperanza (6s-pS-ran'-za). Hope. 

fire water. Whiskey. 

float rock. Fragmental rock, particularly rock containing ore, carried 
by the elements away from the place of its occurrence, 
forty-niners. People who went to California in 1849 following the 
discovery of gold. 

frijoles (fre-hol'-6s). Dried beans, a staple of diet in Mexico and 
on ranches of the Southwest. 

Frio (fre'-o). Cold; name of a river in Southwest Texas, 
frog-sticker. Pocket knife. 

Geronimo (ha-r6n'-I-mo). Stubborn and fierce chief of the Apaches. 
Gila (he'-la) monster. A kind of lizard that takes its name from the 
Gila River. 

gin about. Chase around. 

Goliad (go'-H-ad'). An old Spanish town and mission in southern 
Texas, noted because of the massacre of Texans near it. 
grab for leather, or pull leather. To catch hold of the horn or some 
other part of the saddle in order to keep on a plunging horse. 
Greeley, Horace (1811-1872). American editor. After a trip across 
the continent by stage, he advised young men to “go west.” 
Guadalupe (gwa'-tha-loop-a; go-da-loop). Texas river, 
gun runner. Blockade runner. 

hackamore. A corruption of the Spanish jaquima; halter, headstall, 
hand. Cowhand, cowboy; 

hobbles. A pair of fetters, usually of rope or rawhide, for prevent¬ 
ing horse stock from straying off. 

306 


Words, Phrases and Names 


hombre (Sm'-bra). Man. 

horn string. A leather string, fastened to the horn (cantle) of the 
saddle; used for securing a rope. 

horse wrangler. The rider who takes care of a cow outfit’s horses; 
called also remudero. 

huajillo (wa-he'-yO). A thorny brush, the leaves of which afford 
excellent forage, belonging to the catclaw family. 

Hueco (wa'-ko). The name of a Texas tribe of Indians, popularized 
into Waco. 

huisache (we-sa'-cha; we'-s&ch'). A graceful tree belonging to the 
acacia family. 

Indian bread root. A plant the tubular roots of which afforded food 
to early pioneers as well as to Indians; called also prairie potato. 

Indian Territory. Now a part of Oklahoma. 

jacal (ha-kal'). Cabin, hut. 

javelina (ha'-vS-le'-na). Collared peccary; from the Spanish jab(v)- 
alina. 

Juanita (wa-ne'-ta). Little Jane; Jennie. 


keel over. Fall. 

La Presa de la Mula (la pra'-sa da la moo'-la). The Tank of the 
Mule; Mule Tank. 

La Presa de Tres Dias (la pra'-sa da tras de'-as). The Tank of 
Three Days. 

Lampasas (l&m-p&s'-as). Literally, water lilies; name of a stream, 
lariat. Rope. 

Lavaca (la-v&k'-a). An incorrect running together of two words, la 
and vaca —the cow; name of a Texas river, 
leather weed. A rubber-like plant, the roots of which are used to 
tan buckskin. 

leggins. Chaps, made of leather. 

Leona (le-o'-na). Lioness; a Texas river. 

Lipan (16-pan'). An Indian tribe. 

Llano (l&'-no; ya'-n5). A prairie, or plain; name of a Texas river, 
locoed. Crazed; from loco, crazy, 
lode. A rich deposit of ore. 
loggy. Sluggish. 

Loma de Harina (lo'-ma da a-re'-na). Hill of Flour; Flour Hill. 

307 


On the Open Range 


Loma Escondida (lo'-ma 6s'-kon-de'-tha). Hidden Hill. 

Los Angeles (16s &n'-jSl-6s). The Angeles. 

Los Brazos de Dios (los bra'-z5s da A he-os'). The Arms of God; 
name of an important Texas river. 

McCulloch, Ben. A famous Texas ranger. 
manada (ma-na'-tha). A band of mares. 

Mariposa (m&r'-I-po'-sa). Butterfly.* 

matador (ma'-ta-thor'; m&'-ta-dor'). The man who fights the bull 
in a bullfight; a killer. 

mesa (ma'-s&). (1) A table; (2) a table-like structure of land, 
mesquite draw. A hollow place (a swag) grown up with mesquite 
brush. 

metate (mS-ta'-ti). A stone used to grind corn or other grain upon. 
mezcla (m6z'-kla). A mixture of earth and water used as a cement, 
milling. Moving in a circle. 

mixed cattle. Cattle of various ages and grades and of both sexes. 
Mogollones (mo'-go-yon'-6s). Mountains in New Mexico, 
money belt. A belt made for holding coins. 

Montechena (mon'-te-che'-na). Herman Lehmann’s name among 
the Comanches. 
moro (mo'-ro). Blue. 

morral (mo-ral'). A fibre bag; used both as a nose bag and to carry 
articles in. 

mother lode. The main lode. See lode. 
muley. Hornless. 

mustang. A wild, ownerless (maverick) breed of horses; from the 
Spanish mesteho. 

mustang grape. A wild grape, common in Texas, 
mustanger. A man who caught mustangs. 
muy (moo'-I). Very. 

Navidad (n&v'-I-d&d'; nav'-I-thath). Nativity; name of a Texas 
river. 

nester. A squatter; a man who settles on state or government land, 
night-herder. A cowboy who herds cattle at night. 

No Man’s Land. An obsolete designation for the Oklahoma Pan¬ 
handle, ownership of which was formerly in dispute, 
norther. A wind from the north. 

Nueces (Nu-a'-sas) River. Most important river in Texas between 
San Antonio and the Rio Grande. The word means pecan, or 
nut. 


308 


Words, Phrases and Names 


Off herd. Not on duty with the herd. 

Ogalalla (o-ga-l&l'-la). During trail days the most important cattle 
center in Nebraska. The name is derived from a branch of the 
Sioux Indians. 

Olmos (ol'-mos). Elms. 

open range. Range that is not fenced. 

outcrop. The appearance above the surface of the ground of a stra¬ 
tum of rock or a vein of ore. 

outfit. A unit, or “ crowd,” of cowboys with chuck wagon, remuda, 
etc.; a ranch. 

outlaw. (1) A horse that refuses to be tamed; (2) a wild cow or 
steer; (3) a man who has violated the law and will not give up. 

pack outfit. A unit of pack animals; the equipment of a pack animal. 
padre (pa'-thra). Father; priest, 
paint. Pied; spotted. 

paisano (pi-s3/-no). A picturesque Western bird also called road- 
runner and chaparral cock. The word means, literally, coun¬ 
tryman, also pheasant. 

Paiute (pi'-Ot'). A tribe of Indians. 

Palo Duro (pa'-lo du'-ro). Hard wood; a branch of Red River run¬ 
ning through the Texas Panhandle. 
pastor (pas-tor'). Shepherd. 

Pecos (pa'-kos; pa'-kus). River of New Mexico and Texas. 

Penasco (pa-nyas'-ko). Large Rock, 
peso (pa'-so). Dollar. 

Peta Nacona (pa'-ta na-co'-na). Name of a Comanche chief, 
picayune. A Spanish half-bit, valued at 6j cents; loosely, a nickel 
or other small coin. 

pig-nut. A kind of “wild goober”; an edible bulb, 
play his hand. Play his cards. 

pobreeitos (po'-vra-se'-tos). Poor little ones; poor fellows, 
point man. The cowboy who rides on either side of a herd at the 
lead; the two point men guide the herd, 
pot hook. A hook used for holding a pot over the fire 
Pony Express. An organization of riders for carrying mail across 
the continent. 

powder horn. A horn for containing powder. 

prairie schooner. A covered wagon, the canvas cover of which sug¬ 
gested a schooner under sail. 

Presidio (pre-sld'-f-o). Fort. 


309 


On the Open Range 


Pueblo (pwSb'-lo). Town. 

puncheon. A split log with the face smoothed by an ax. 

Purgatoire (ptir'-ga-twar'). Purgatory. 

Quanah (kwa-na) Parker. A Comanche chief. 
quien sabe (ky6n sa'-ba). Who knows? 

Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618). English navigator, statesman, 
poet, historian, courtier, and adventurer. One of the most 
energetic men that ever lived, 
ranchero (r&n-ch6'-ro). A ranchman, 
restta (ra-a'-ta). A rope; particularly, a rawhide rope, 
remuda (ra-moo'-tha). A band of saddle horses. 

Rio de las Plumas (re'-o da las ploom'-as). River of the Feathers. 
Rio Grande (re'-o gr&nd'-€). Big River, 
road agent. A highway robber of the West. 

rolling pin. A piece of rounded wood—often a bottle—used for 
rolling out dough. 

run a brand. (1) To give or use a brand. (2) To burn a brand on 
an animal with a running iron, 
run a line of coyote traps. To examine the line of traps, 
running iron. A branding iron shaped at one end like a shepherd’s 
crook. 

rustler. (1) A thief; (2) a horse wrangler; (3) a man with much 
energy. 

saddler. (1) A man who makes saddles; (2) an easy-gaited saddle 
horse. 

San Antonio (s&n &n-to'-nl-o). Saint Anthony. 

San Diego (s&n de-a'-go). Saint James. 

San Francisco (s&n fr&n-sls'-ko). Saint Francis. 

San Patricio (s&n pa-tre'-shyo). Saint Patrick. 

San Saba (s&n s&'-ba). Name of a noted Spanish mission on the 
San Saba River, Texas. 

Santa Fe (s&n-ta/ fa'). Holy Faith. 

Santa Fe Trail. Emigrant and freight route from the Missouri River 
to Santa Fe, New Mexico, 
senor (sa-nyor'). Sir; a gentleman. 
senorita (sS-nyor-e'-ta). Miss; a lady, 
set-fast. An incurable sore on a horse’s back, 
settler. A man who establishes his home on a plot of ground out of 
the public domain. 


310 


Words, Phrases and Names 


shape up. To put into an orderly condition, 
shot pouch. A pouch, or bag, used to carry leaden shot in. 
sign. Tracks and other evidences of their passing left by animals 
or men. 

sit back. Pull back. 

sotol (s6-tol'). A member of the yucca family. 

Spanish bit. A bridle bit, very cruel to a horse’s mouth, used by 
Spaniards and Mexicans. 

Spanish moss. Long moss, very beautiful as it drapes from the 
branches of trees. 

spur strap. A strap used to fasten a spur on the foot, 
stake pin. A peg, either of wood or metal, for driving into the 
ground and tying the end of a picket (or stake) rope to, the 
other end of the rope being attached to an animal’s neck, 
stake rope. Rope used for staking, or picketing, a horse on grass, 
stew ball. A corruption of “stew bald” (or “skewbald”); a black- 
and-white spotted horse. 

stirrup leather. The strap by which a stirrup is suspended from the 
saddle. 

strike. In mining terminology, “to make a strike” is to find ore 
in paying quantities—“pay dirt.” 
swale. A swag; a little valley. 

Tank. (1) A reservoir made by damming a stream; (2) a reservoir 
made of wood, concrete, or metal. 

Texas rangers. State police; they were formerly mounted and most 
of them still are. 

tinaja (tS-na'-ha). A natural water hole, usually of rock, 
tinder. Inflammable material used for kindling a fire from a spark; 

scorched linen made the best tinder. 

Tokonhona (to'-kon-ho'-na). Indian name for the Brazos River, 
Texas. 

trail boss. The man in charge of a herd of cattle being driven over 
a trail. 

trail days. The days when long trails were thoroughfares for great 
hej-ds of cattle. 

trail driver. A cowhand engaged in driving cattle over long trails; 

usually, one of the interstate trails leading from Texas, 
trail herd. A herd of cattle (or horses) on a trail, 
trigueno (tre-ga'yno). A brown horse. 

Trinidad (trln'-I-d&d). Trinity. 

31 ] 


On the Open Range 


Tucumeari (too'-ktim-kar'-I). An Indian name. 

tule. A reedy growth. 

tumble-weed. A bushy weed that when dry rolls before a wind. 

Turk’s head. A variety of cactus. 

vamonos (va/-mo-n6s). Let’s go. 

vamoose (va-moos'). Go; get out. 

vaquero (va-kS'-ro). A Mexican cowboy; hence, on the border, any 
cowboy. 

vara (va'-ra). A Spanish measure equivalent to approximately 
thirty-three and a third inches. 

varmints. From vermin; predatory animals. 

visnaga (vls-na'-ga). Barrel cactus; other varieties of cactus are 
also called by the name. 

wahee (wa'-he'). Indian word for beef adopted by many frontiers¬ 
men. 

walk mustangs down. To follow them until they were too tired to 
run away. 

Wakarusa (wa'-ka-rdo'-sa). Name of a river in Kansas known also 
as the Lawrence. 

Washita (w&sh'-l-to). Indian name for an Oklahoma river. 

water-skin. A bag for carrying water made from the skin of a goat, 
deer, or other animal. 

Wichita (wlch'-I-to). Name of a tribe of Indians. 

Yavapai (ya'-va-pi')- A tribe of Yuman Indians. 

yoke mates. Oxen working together under one yoke. 



312 










































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